Weather

When I lived in Evergreen, the weather was pretty predictable. Cold, warm, hot, cold. That's how the season shaped up too. Winter was down right freezing cold and snowing. You could get between one inch to one foot in an hour, depending on how high up you were. I was about 8500 feet above sea level, so I got lots of snow. Warm would be spring. This is also called mud season where no matter how much you cleaned your carpets, you would have to do it again and again. Hot is summer and it wasn't just hot it was dry heat, way high in the air hot. The nights were relatively cool and comfortable, but the days could get toasty. Then came fall where depending on the year, it could be real cold fall or real warm fall. Always beautiful with the aspen trees changing colors though.

Down on the plains, you never know what you will get. Take tonight for example. We just got home (it's girls' night at the Williams house) and just got everyone fed. Looking west, we could see a possible rain cloud coming. Enough time to do a head count of chickens and ducks, feed the "starving to death" fat horses, run the dogs, and chase the cat into the house. You know when the storm is here because Llani the dog is under a table, your feet, a bed, whatever she can get her body under because the thunder is making noise. So here's how it stacks up in the springtime on the plains. Storm blows in (literally blows hard wind), lightning shoots around, thunder hits, deluge of rain, stop. In about 15 minutes it is done in central/western Elbert County and now it is off to hit the eastern plains of Colorado where there are tornados and hail storms and gosh know what else. That is springtime on the plains for ya. Tomorrow it might snow a foot and the next day it will be in the 80's again, mud season. In the summertime, it is always breezy around here. Hair spray is he mainstay of this house, especially for Shelby and I. Someday I would like to leave the house with the same hair style I completed. Yea, no. Summertime is incredibly warm or hot, but with the breeze, it isn't that bad. We love the summertime and are usually found outdoors until the sun goes down or the kids say that they are hungry and it is 8 o'clock and we haven't had dinner due to chore and running around.

Now fall is not that bad either. Nights it is cooler and darker, days are comfortable. We can still go outside as long as there is light. No major snowstorms, but Mother Nature may throw one here and there to remind us that winter is coming. We don't have the changing leave trees down here either, so it starts to get pretty bland and brown. Starting to can or freeze our vegetable harvest, Greg goes hunting once or twice for the elusive elk, girls start school again, and we revel in the beautiful sunsets.

Winter sucks. Plain and simple, it sucks. I hate winter down here. Hate is a tough word, but when you don't have a garage and have blowing snow (did I tell you it is windy out here about 360 days of the year? Those five days without wind is in the summertime when you are begging for it to come back), it is cold and yucky! We don't have snow totals, we have snow drifts. I think our tallest was eight feet tall. All three girls were able to sled down it. And when it snows, you are stuck inside. The longest we have been stuck inside due to snow is about three days. Two days was the longest to be stuck inside without power. Yea, that was not so fun.

Why do we stay out here? Because it is the way we are. You have to be pretty tough to survive the elements and to really enjoy all that there is on the plains of Colorado. Ranching is tough, farming is tough, living so far from town and family is tough. But you plow a head and remember those beautiful summer days and springtime storms that usually last 15 minutes.

Until then...