Change in the Weather

Today is Labor Day, last day of a pleasant three-day weekend. It is warm outside but not horrible, upper 80s, and the air is bad, but not bad like it was yesterday when the smoke from the Cameron Peak fire was overwhelming us. This has been a dreadfully hot summer, with almost no rain, and I'm so tired of it.

So, starting tonight, we're going to have a change. Here's what the Weather Service says will happen:

A strong cold front will drop south across Colorado. North winds are expected to gust up to 50 mph and temperatures will plummet as the cold front pushes through.

It is hard to wrap my head around that. And as if that isn't enough, they also say this:

Heavy snow will fall in the Front Range Mountains and Foothills Tuesday and Tuesday night, with accumulations of 8 to 14 inches in most areas, and locally heavier amounts around 20 inches possible. 

That snow will continue into Tuesday night when more significant accumulations will be possible on trees and elevated surfaces, resulting in tree damage and possible power outages. If significant accumulation occurs, be mindful of where you park your car -- not under trees, and be alert for falling tree branches.

I have actually never seen a weather forecast like that before. I went out and looked at our trees, to see what might fall on us tomorrow. Our cars aren't parked very close to any big trees, so they'll probably be OK. What is close to a big tree is our roof! Our enormous Siberian elm hangs its branches right over our house. And then there's our fence! Doesn't the maple tree in the photo look like it's gearing up to drop its branches on that fence? It's happened before. Years ago, pre-twins, that tree dropped a gigantic branch into our next-door neighbor's yard.

At least Rocket Boy is still here, for a few more days, to help with the clean-up.

Other than the impending weather, I don't have much else to report. I'm very worried about the weather in California, which has reached apocalyptic conditions. It was 110 in Los Altos yesterday, 121 down south in Woodland Hills. It was predicted to be cooler today, but instead it's 110 in Los Altos again. And they're still having terrible, terrible fires. We have fires too, of course, but the snow and rain will help with that.

We made it through our first full week of school. It wasn't a great experience, but it could have been worse. I'm learning how to deal with this new type of distance learning. I can let the kids work on their own more than I could last spring, but not as much as I was hoping. I need to read their teachers' Schoology pages and get a clear view of what's expected, because the kids don't do it themselves. They say they read them, but they don't read carefully enough to understand the content. Not worth yelling at them, just need to do some more work myself, keep them on track until school goes back to normal.

They're saying that BVSD may bring K-2 kids back to in-person school soon, which would be wonderful (even though it doesn't affect us). But covid rates in Boulder are going up. In the paper today it said 65 new cases were reported on Sunday, the largest one-day increase since the pandemic began. Thank you, University of Colorado, and an extra special shout-out to the fraternities and their illegal rush parties. 188,983 people have died of the virus in the U.S. so far, an increase of about 5500 since a week ago. College students don't tend to die of the virus, but if there's a lot of it in the community and older people start catching it, hmm. 

Rocket Boy has a reservation to fly back to St. Louis on September 14th, a week from now. We will miss him a lot, but in some ways it will be a little easier having him go back, because this little house is very crowded with four people trying to work and to get along. The main problem, as I see it, has been the weather. When it's in the 90s every single day, and you have to keep the house shut up until evening, tempers flare. Tomorrow, when it's snowing and blowing, and perhaps the power will go out, tempers will also flare. I'm hoping we have a few days of decent weather before he leaves, so that we can have the windows open and do things outside without being miserable.