Storms Inbound

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night at all, but after a brief glow at sunrise, the wind, sleet, snow, and gloom drove out the light with a tempest to herald the arrival of Spring. The storms that blew through from west to east later unleashed deadly tornadoes in states like Arkansas and Missouri. My heart goes to all who are recovering or still suffering from the losses caused by the weather on that day.

The cloud ceiling had started to descend from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains before dawn, moving eastward across the plains. The daily temperatures had see-sawed up and down in the previous days, with seasonable warmth welcomed amidst the occasional chill.

The reflected glow from the clouds highlighted the areas around Bear Creek, in particular, the former college at Loretto Heights. The tower from the old campus sits on the highest point in Denver, Ruby Hill. For a closer look at the tower, illuminated by the sunrise, check out the last time I visited it in this post.

The sun rose upon Bear Creek, shining on solar panels installed on the high school (from where my children graduated, but re-built from the ground up since I attended the former high school with the same name). A drainage gulch, called Weaver Creek, runs alongside Kipling Parkway on the western boundary of the high school. When I was a child at Bear Creek Elementary (the original Bear Creek School, originally from 1908, was eventually demolished when the high school was rebuilt), the wetlands had a few ponds that were extensively investigated for biology subjects this time of year when the tadpoles would start to flourish.

It was a dramatic and colorful dawn, a brief lull before the storms that followed. For a little while, wind, rain and sleet reigned until calm would return, as if the preceding chaos had never occurred. Locally, the storms were eventually pushed out in the afternoon. However, as the day went on, the storms continued to build and push ever further eastward, ultimately unleashing devastation in their wake.

Of course, I had to capture the dark clouds over my home in a 360° panorama, here set as a “Tiny Planet” in style. This area, now developed, used to be the Anderson family ranch. Two boys from that family, Bryan and Jay, went to the same school as I. Bryan, the elder, picked on his younger brother, Jay, and I despised that. I was friends with Jay, but we were also friendly rivals. That was before the development of the parkway that runs along the upper left of the panorama. The last forty years have seen a lot of changes and development in this area, such that I have lived not just in one dwelling that can be seen in the panorama, but two—decades apart!

When the sun rose the next day, a few cloudy remnants of the storms lingered. Once again, the sunrise proved to be very colorful. You can see even more photos like this to come in the next “Wordless Wednesday”—as planned, that is. We’ll have to wait and see what the Colorado HIGH SKY has in stock for us in the future!

Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this ol’ newsletter. Let me know what you think!