Winter weather

The weather service forecast a 10-30% chance of up to a half inch of snow for the past few days. They got it wrong. I think there's at least a foot of snow on the ground, and it's still snowing. The wind is blowing, too. School is already guaranteed to have a 2-hour delay, and will possibly be canceled. It depends on when the snow stops.

Although we've had a few snows so far this fall, this is the first big storm of the season. We can always use the precipitation.

Poor NOAA. They've not been very accurate this month. To be fair, the Palmer Divide is a tough area to forecast. Most weather maps stick their labels over the area, thus avoiding the issue. NOAA is forced to come up with something anyway. The spot where we live is lumped in with some other areas in the Rampart Range that aren't on the Divide and aren't even on this side of the Ramparts. We find it more accurate to look at the forecasts for a couple of local towns and extrapolate from there.

We took a few photos. I haven't downloaded them from the camera yet. I want to get a few more in the morning. It's always glorious to see the sun shining on fresh snow.

It might be time to change the header photo for this blog from autumn colors to winter snow.

High-country hiking is probably over for the year. It's time to haul out the snowshoes, yak trax, and snow-proof clothing. We also enjoy winter hiking at the lower elevations. There's not much snow on the ground most of the time, the rattlesnakes are hibernating, and the prickly pear cacti are dormant and not as vicious.

Here's a cactus photo. I don't remember exactly where I took it, but it was probably on the banks of the Arkansas River near Buena Vista. I can't remember if it was this spring or last spring. Many small prickly pear cacti were nestled in the pine needles, full of sharp cactus spines and pretty yellow flowers.

In winter, the prickly pears flop over on the ground and get all reddish and wrinkly. The spines don't seem quite as threatening. The cacti around here easily survive -20F to -30F temperatures during the winter and bounce back quickly in the spring. They are very tough plants. The flowers are beautiful.

I don't have any photos of the local rattlesnakes. We usually back off when we see or hear them instead of reaching for our camera. Our instincts are for survival rather than photography.