Ready for Winter?

winter fashion
I was at Target yesterday picking up a few household items. Of course, they have all their Christmas decorations and such out – guess it’s that time of year. What really cracked me up was this woman. She was in her late 20s, dressed in a sweater, jeans and snow boots. Very fashionable, she looked great. Thing is, it was 60 degrees out. I didn’t even bother to grab a jacket.

Guess not everyone is a fan of the global warming…

Lightning storm starts 800 fires in California

In another wacky (I’m sure) global warming related weather incident, a freak lightning storm has started over 800 wildfires in Northern California.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was told late Sunday evening that the state had 520 fires, and he found it “quite shocking” that by Monday morning the number had risen above 700.

Moments later, a top state fire official standing at Schwarzenegger’s side offered a grim update. The figure was actually 842 fires, said Del Walters, assistant regional chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. All but a couple were in the northern part of the state.

“This is an unprecedented lightning storm in California, that it lasted as long as it did, 5,000 to 6,000 lightning strikes,” Walters said. “We are finding fires all the time.”

Stupid Global Warming

Tornadoes in Northern Colorado

Weather in Northern Colorado has been bizarre all spring. We haven’t had the typical nice weather that makes spring in the Rockies so great. Today was just the cap on the spring weather.

Six tornadoes were spotted in Northern Colorado. The biggest starting in Johnstown moving north through Windsor and on to Wellington.

I have lived in this area my whole life, and this is the first time I remember a tornado actually causing damage. In fact, I don’t remember much for tornado warnings since I was in elementary school.

This morning, I was working away and the power went out. I got a call from a girl I work with who’s mother lives in Windsor. She said they just had the worst hailstorm she’d ever seen. I started making phone calls to make sure everyone new what was going on, little did I know that within a few miles of my home a tornado was cutting a path of destruction.

If you are looking for pictures, the Coloradoan has two nice photo galleries
Windsor storm damage pictures
Photos by Windsor Beacon freelance photographer Carol Hirata

Colorado Blizzard of 2006

I'm sure the whole world has heard about the Colorado Blizzard of 2006.

2006 Colorado Blizzard

This is the biggest storm we've had here in years. There is a common misconception that the Colorado Front Range gets a lot of snow. I used to work tech support for a tax product and many of our customers were from New York. It was not uncommon for our East Coast customers to assume that just because I lived in Colorado we were constantly under snow, when in fact the opposite is true. Denver has 300 days of sunshine annually – more than most places in the United States including the so called Sunshine State. Most of the time it was nicer where I live than it was in New York City.

This misconception was capitalized during this week's blizzard when a news report interviewed a Honolulu man stranded at Denver International Airport who was angry at being stranded due to Denver's inability to adequately deal with the blizzard. His comment, 'Don't they know it snows in Colorado?' Snows on the Colorado front range are inconsistent, often years go by without a significant snowstorm. It's inpractical from a fiscal standpoint to have a large snow removal budget on the off chance that a major snowstorm is going to roll through.

This week's blizzard has turned out well for me. I ended up being snowed in for a day and a half and my boss offered to let me take a vacation day today on short notice. I don't have to go back to work until after Christmas.

This is by far the biggest storm I've seen in a long time. About 7-8 years ago we had a good storm – I remember driving my Jeep Cherokee around in snow up to the bumper. This is definitely this biggest storm since then. I'm sure it's all because of Global Warming.

I've posted some pictures of the day of the storm. I'll take my camera while I drive around today and add some pictures.