Okay! Enough snow, already!

I haven't been able to do much of anything lately. One week after the first snow, Boulder was hit with THREE new blizzards that left over one foot of ADDITIONAL snow. Snow is piled up in parking lots in hills so large you could ski down them (this is NOT an exaggeration- people are actually skiing and snowboarding down them). Now we are being hit with yet ANOTHER storm! This one is expected to dump an additional 12-18" on Boulder (that's on top of the foot that was already there from these last storms). The University has been either closed early or closed entirely an unprecedented FIVE times in three weeks. Needless to say, the new job I started three weeks ago has been the easiest I've ever had...

The thrill is gone (no more snowrkeling), and now it's time for some quiet contemplation. Many of these images look better in a larger size. You can download large pics from my flickr page.

First of all, some fractals of nature:

Icicles:

Falling Snow:

And in the darkness:

Unusual Weather

This post is a little late, but I wanted to include some amazing photos taken by our neighbor:

That was about two weeks ago (June 24th). This was actually mild compared to other areas in Boulder.

The interesting thing is that I got to experience the development of this storm. I was in Lyons (West of Boulder, in the mountains) with friends. We got caught in an electrical storm. The electricity soon turned into a downpour! Luckily, we were able to get indoors.

About five minutes after the storm passed us, our friend got a call from another friend of ours who was in Boulder (East of us). I could overhear her on the phone saying that she had pulled over in her car because it was so bad. While I agreed that the rain was heavy, I didn't really think it was that bad. That is, until we started driving home!

It looked like it had snowed! It was incredible. The hail ripped up our trees and our garden. All of Boulder was a mess for a few days.

What is interesting about this storm is that we were able to witness what happens when you force a saturated air mass over mountains! All of that downpour (just rain) that fell on us in Lyons had to be forced over the mountains to make it into Boulder. The rain droplets got pushed up higher in the atmosphere (where it's colder) and froze! Once it got over the mountains and fell on Boulder, everything that was rain in Lyons was hail in Boulder!

Thanks to Geneva for the loverly photos! She said it sounded awful in her house as the hail beat down on her roof...

It's Twins!

Every year, the deer come to our neighborhood to give birth. This year, she happened to choose our yard. This was the scene when I came home for my lunch: Twin #1:

Twin #2:

This was just moments after their birth. Now, they return to our yard every day to either take a nap, eat our roses and pansies, or spend the night (one of them is under our bench every morning):