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Showing posts with label clouds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clouds. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2009
Our Amazing Earth
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Sun is Still Blank
The sun is still blank and that means more noctilucent clouds!!! It has been so cloudy and rainy here in Kherson that there is no opportunity to go outside and check the sky at dusk. This morning it's still cloudy - high, thin clouds - but the sun is shining. I am going to try and check out the sky tonight and look for noctilucents.
I kind of enjoy saying that word in my head - knock te loo cent. I hope that's the correct pronounciation! ha ha
This week has been a doozy for photographers all over the northern hemisphere.
Douglas Cooper,
Looking north from David Stirling memorial statue near Stirling, Scotland
Jul. 12, 2009
NLC display from Central Scotland on 12th July 2009, including reflection in a puddle. Best display for a long time. ISS also made an appearance.
Piotr Majewski, Torun, Poland Jul. 13, 2009
This was unusual meeting of gothic miracle (Torun, the City of Copernicus) with the heavenly miracle of NLC. I have NEVER seen such bright, large and detailed NLC's! They could be spotted right after sunset, believe it or not, and reached over 40 degrees over horizon, what is unexpected on Poland's latitude.
Dan Earl, Grass Valley, Oregon Jul. 13, 2009
I Took these pictures Monday July 13 from Grass Valley Oregon. Pretty good display. I have been looking for NLCs off and on from this location for a couple of years. Tonight, I had no doubt what I was looking at!
All photos and many more are located at: Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery - Summer 2009
I kind of enjoy saying that word in my head - knock te loo cent. I hope that's the correct pronounciation! ha ha
This week has been a doozy for photographers all over the northern hemisphere.
Douglas Cooper, Looking north from David Stirling memorial statue near Stirling, Scotland
Jul. 12, 2009
NLC display from Central Scotland on 12th July 2009, including reflection in a puddle. Best display for a long time. ISS also made an appearance.
Piotr Majewski, Torun, Poland Jul. 13, 2009
This was unusual meeting of gothic miracle (Torun, the City of Copernicus) with the heavenly miracle of NLC. I have NEVER seen such bright, large and detailed NLC's! They could be spotted right after sunset, believe it or not, and reached over 40 degrees over horizon, what is unexpected on Poland's latitude.
Dan Earl, Grass Valley, Oregon Jul. 13, 2009
I Took these pictures Monday July 13 from Grass Valley Oregon. Pretty good display. I have been looking for NLCs off and on from this location for a couple of years. Tonight, I had no doubt what I was looking at!
All photos and many more are located at: Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery - Summer 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Four-thirty In The Morning
Yep - it's 4:30 in the morning in Kiev, and I've been awake for at least half an hour, maybe longer. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person - so what am I doing awake at this insane hour?
Jet lag.
It seems the older I get, the worse the jet lag.
Such is life.
We left Denver in a rain storm, but thankfully there was no lightening. After all the lightening of the former 3 weeks, I was thankful that this storm had swept in and just hung around long enough to settle the electrical charge between sky and earth for awhile.
Gray clouds - but somehow gray clouds are not the same in Colorado as they are in Ukraine. I've wondered about that before - why the difference - and I think it has to do with two things.
First - lack of humidity. Colorado is so dry that the air is completely clear between ground and cloud. We see the bottom of the clouds with all their details. The sky does not become a white sheet of nothing, or a gray sheet of depression. The sky is alive with shape and shadow, ever moving and changing. It is totally interesting to look at and watch, especially if there is lightening, too. :) heh heh
Second - the earth is beautiful. The sky is full of moving shape and shadow, but the earth around is also full of color, shape and beauty. Purple mountains, dark evergreen trees, bright green meadows - or purple mountains, houses in a variety of shapes and colors, cars whizzing here and there. And everything is basically 'clean' and bright. Totally different than Ukraine.
The day before we flew out, Mel and I drove down to Woodland Park to check our email using the free wi-fi at Safeway. It was foggy at my parents - fog drifting between black spruce trees, creeping along the ground, whisping here and there through aspen branches, grasses and wild flowers covered in dew drops, drops of water gathering and running to the sharp ends of pine needles, dangling for a few minutes and then falling to land in little splashes several feet below.
As we drove farther down the mountain, we came out from under the blanket of cozy fog and drove down below the clouds. Whisps of white floating just above us, like an upside down merenge pie. I wanted to reach up and take a finger full of whipped cream cloud, put it in my mouth and savor the sweetness and light.
Emotions welled up inside and I wanted to cry at the beauty around me. Instead, I looked and looked and looked, trying to imprint it all in my memory, storing it all away in the mental file labled "Low clouds in the mountains of Colorado". I have several very distinct memories stored there - and I bring them out and savor them every now and again when my world here is white or gray and faceless.
We had a fine trip over the Atlantic - no arguements with other disgruntled passengers, thank God! I developed a headache about half-way through the night which turned into a migraine. I think it was a combination of the eye drops (which make my sinus's hurt), lack of sleep and emotion. Whatever - by the time we arrived at Heathrow and made it to our hotel room, my head was really pounding.
The hotel room was an oven. I do not associate Great Britain with hot weather. Warm, yes - it has been quite warm in the summer when we've been there, but not
"90 degrees in your hotel room" hot. There was a fan in our room (aha - they KNEW it was too hot in there! a fan already in our room is a first in Europe), so we turned it on and went to bed and to sleep. A few hours later we woke up and went down for dinner. Another big AHA - our room was directly over the kitchen. Well, well, well - no wonder it was the cheapest one I could find on the internet. :)
The next morning we went to the airport. I punched in all the code at the little kiosk for getting our boarding passes and everything went well. Mel and I had no idea how this trip was going to go - so this was a good sign, BA was not rejecting our reservation between Heathrow and Borispyl.
Why were we worried? Well, Ukraine has changed her immigration laws and we had no idea if we'd be let back in to the country again or not, even with good visas in our passports. No one knew if we'd get in, or if we'd be given a hard time at passport control, or if we'd be put on a plane right back to Heathrow, or if we'd be able to enter the country with no problems. The law has changed drastically and no one knows yet how it is going to be enforced.
Was I nervous? No. Seriously - I was not nervous about this at all. Either way things went - enter or be refused - well, that was the way it was going to be.
We got in line at Heathrow passport control and listened to a guy saying over and over and over again (and over again) - "No water or other drinks. Please put all of your cosmetics, toothpaste and liquids in one of these plastic bags. No containers over 3 mil (I think that's what it was - I just tuned him out)." Mel and I carry no liquids of any kind in our hand luggage. No make-up for me, no toothpaste, no deoderant, no water, no nothing. It's easier that way. Sure, we may be stinky and have bad breath by the time we arrive where we are going, but we haven't set off those alarms!
I handed the woman my boarding pass, she scanned it - looked a bit startled, reached over to the guy next to her, took his pen and then scribbled on my boarding pass. Then she looked at me and told me I had to go back to the BA ticket counter. Uh oh. I turned and stepped back a couple feet and waited to see what happened with Mel's boarding pass. Ditto. We went back to the BA ticket counter.
There was a sign there saying that all passengers to Kiev, Moscow, L'viv, and a few other places in the same part of the world, plus somewhere in Africa if I remember correctly, needed to recheck their boarding passes. Now why could they have not actually said that on the screen at the kiosk, or on a sign beside the line we'd stood in for about 20 minutes? Grrrrr. Big grrrr. I handed the woman my boarding pass, she scanned it through some little machine and handed it back to me. That's it. I asked why we had to do that and she mumbled something about it needed to be rescanned. No answer. The same with Mel's - and everyone else's going to those listed cities. That was not a hand written sign at her counter - it was printed and it was not new. So why the heck did they not warn us on the BA check-in screen? Do they think it makes the passengers less stressed to have to go through that long line at passport control AGAIN???? Listening the whole time to some guy shouting about what must be put into plastic bags???? Get real, people!
We finally got back to the place where we'd been turned back before and zipped right through this time. Now it was time for the 'get undressed and take out your laptop' security control. Due to my new knees, I will never ever again go through this process with any sense of privacy. First, for the first time ever, they made us take out all of Mel's insulin and put it into a little plastic baggy. Well, at least one bottle - the rest they let through in his carry-on. Grrr. And I had to take out my teeny bottles of eye drops, too. Shoes off, metal off, laptops in trays, purses and bags in trays and I went through the metal scanner and set it off.
I told the woman in Denver who offered to pat me down in private that there was no need to go somewhere private - I've been patted down at Heathrow and after being patted down at Heathrow, well, every where else is nothing at all. It's kind of like after you have a baby you realize that absolutely nothing on your body is private any more (When Kara was born we were at a teaching hospital and I think half the new doctors in the place came in to check and see how far I was along.) Heathrow doesn't just pat you down - they PAT YOU DOWN, every nook and cranny, every bulge and dip. Who knows but what that roll of fat may just be something other than what it looks to be to everyone else in the world! Sigh. It's part of the price I, and every other person who has prosthetic knees, hips, etc. pays to travel through the UK. I understand their fear - they've dealt with the IRA and other terrorist groups for way more years than the US has. But still - at least they could OFFER to maul me in private - I saw those two guys in line waiting their turn, watching and laughing. (Stick my tongue out at them.) I'd rather be patted down like this, than not, when all is said and done - they do a good job at Heathrow in my opinion.
We finally got completely dressed again and wandered down to a waiting area near Starbucks. Mel settled me in to a seat with all the carry-on stuff beside me and took off looking for breakfast and coffee. Our boarding gate was not yet listed, but I could see the board from where I was sitting. I couldn't actually read the board, but I could tell where Kiev was in the list because K I E V is so much shorter than M A R S E I L L E S or even H A M B U R G, and so forth. I was sitting there thinking how wonderful it would be if that was actually our gate, but knowing that the last time we flew out of Heathrow to Kiev our gate was the very farthest gate away that you could possibly get and still be in Terminal 5. In fact, it takes 20 minutes to get there using transport. It must be a kilometer away - I'm NOT joking. I sat there and ate my croissant and drank most of the mocha (how long will it be before I have another???), and watched the two little boys across from me play with their matchbox cars. After being hit in the foot several times by a speeding car, I asked the mother how old they were. The youngest was almost 3. And I thought of Stirling and smiled.
Mel wandered around awhile. He gets antsy while I get glued to my seat in nerves. He came back, I looked at the board above and behind him and said - hey, we've got a gate! I stood up and started to get stuff ready to haul and he said it's gate A9. Huh? I looked at the number where we were sitting - A9. Not possible. heh heh Yes, possible. Thank you, Lord! He answered my unspoken prayer - we were already at our gate and didn't have to hike our way half-way to London to get to our gate. Yipee.
We arrived in Kiev. A good flight. We walked down the stairs, into the bus, drove to the terminal, got out of the bus, walked up the stairs and in through the door marked ARRIVALS. Passport control was busy - 4 planes had recently landed - but the lines seemed to be moving pretty quick. I chose a line and we stood. Now Mel and I have stood in one of those lines for almost an hour, with people kind of gently shoving and pushing, trying to make it go faster or for them to get ahead of you. This time was quite different. More orderly (could it be because there were so many Germans from one of the other planes - that is something I really like about Germans - they are very orderly). I don't know what it was for sure, but the lines moved much quicker and everyone seemed to be in fairly good moods.
Mel and I went up together - first time we've done that, but with the question as to whether we'd be allowed in or not on our minds, I just went up with him. No one else had been turned away. We handed the officer our passports, she looked at them, ran them through the scanner, stamped Mel's, handed it to him, stamped mine, handed it to me, and we walked through. The easiest we have ever gone through passport control in 12 years of doing it. Wow! I felt like I was in Western Europe there for a couple minutes! Memories of the first time went flashing through my mind and I couldn't help but think - Ukraine has finally come into the modern world! Wow again. Seriously - wow.
So, now it is over an hour later than when I started writing. We've been in Kiev for parts of 3 days and will leave on the train tonight for Kherson. We don't know how long we'll be in Ukraine this time, due to the change in the law. It could be 90 days or it could be 180 days - we aren't sure what the local OVIR will allow us. We do know we'll be going home in November for our regularly scheduled HMA, if not sooner.
Am I glad to be back? I don't know. When we get back to Kherson I will start sorting and packing and getting things ready in case we have to leave in 90 days again. The law says we are allowed in the country only 180 days, then we have to leave for 180 days. After the first 90 days of the 180 days in, we have to be registered as usual - but they can refuse to renew our registration. So, we have to be prepared.
A week before we left in April I was thinking about how 'normal' and 'comfortable' I have become living here in Ukraine. Two days before we left we got word of this new law and everything has changed. God keeps reminding me that this world is not my home so don't put down roots any where. This is very difficult emotionally, but it is reality.
So, now we wait and see what happens next.
I hope I can sleep better tomorrow night in our own bed!!!
Jet lag.
It seems the older I get, the worse the jet lag.
Such is life.
We left Denver in a rain storm, but thankfully there was no lightening. After all the lightening of the former 3 weeks, I was thankful that this storm had swept in and just hung around long enough to settle the electrical charge between sky and earth for awhile.
Gray clouds - but somehow gray clouds are not the same in Colorado as they are in Ukraine. I've wondered about that before - why the difference - and I think it has to do with two things.
First - lack of humidity. Colorado is so dry that the air is completely clear between ground and cloud. We see the bottom of the clouds with all their details. The sky does not become a white sheet of nothing, or a gray sheet of depression. The sky is alive with shape and shadow, ever moving and changing. It is totally interesting to look at and watch, especially if there is lightening, too. :) heh heh
Second - the earth is beautiful. The sky is full of moving shape and shadow, but the earth around is also full of color, shape and beauty. Purple mountains, dark evergreen trees, bright green meadows - or purple mountains, houses in a variety of shapes and colors, cars whizzing here and there. And everything is basically 'clean' and bright. Totally different than Ukraine.
The day before we flew out, Mel and I drove down to Woodland Park to check our email using the free wi-fi at Safeway. It was foggy at my parents - fog drifting between black spruce trees, creeping along the ground, whisping here and there through aspen branches, grasses and wild flowers covered in dew drops, drops of water gathering and running to the sharp ends of pine needles, dangling for a few minutes and then falling to land in little splashes several feet below.
As we drove farther down the mountain, we came out from under the blanket of cozy fog and drove down below the clouds. Whisps of white floating just above us, like an upside down merenge pie. I wanted to reach up and take a finger full of whipped cream cloud, put it in my mouth and savor the sweetness and light.
Emotions welled up inside and I wanted to cry at the beauty around me. Instead, I looked and looked and looked, trying to imprint it all in my memory, storing it all away in the mental file labled "Low clouds in the mountains of Colorado". I have several very distinct memories stored there - and I bring them out and savor them every now and again when my world here is white or gray and faceless.
We had a fine trip over the Atlantic - no arguements with other disgruntled passengers, thank God! I developed a headache about half-way through the night which turned into a migraine. I think it was a combination of the eye drops (which make my sinus's hurt), lack of sleep and emotion. Whatever - by the time we arrived at Heathrow and made it to our hotel room, my head was really pounding.
The hotel room was an oven. I do not associate Great Britain with hot weather. Warm, yes - it has been quite warm in the summer when we've been there, but not
"90 degrees in your hotel room" hot. There was a fan in our room (aha - they KNEW it was too hot in there! a fan already in our room is a first in Europe), so we turned it on and went to bed and to sleep. A few hours later we woke up and went down for dinner. Another big AHA - our room was directly over the kitchen. Well, well, well - no wonder it was the cheapest one I could find on the internet. :)
The next morning we went to the airport. I punched in all the code at the little kiosk for getting our boarding passes and everything went well. Mel and I had no idea how this trip was going to go - so this was a good sign, BA was not rejecting our reservation between Heathrow and Borispyl.
Why were we worried? Well, Ukraine has changed her immigration laws and we had no idea if we'd be let back in to the country again or not, even with good visas in our passports. No one knew if we'd get in, or if we'd be given a hard time at passport control, or if we'd be put on a plane right back to Heathrow, or if we'd be able to enter the country with no problems. The law has changed drastically and no one knows yet how it is going to be enforced.
Was I nervous? No. Seriously - I was not nervous about this at all. Either way things went - enter or be refused - well, that was the way it was going to be.
We got in line at Heathrow passport control and listened to a guy saying over and over and over again (and over again) - "No water or other drinks. Please put all of your cosmetics, toothpaste and liquids in one of these plastic bags. No containers over 3 mil (I think that's what it was - I just tuned him out)." Mel and I carry no liquids of any kind in our hand luggage. No make-up for me, no toothpaste, no deoderant, no water, no nothing. It's easier that way. Sure, we may be stinky and have bad breath by the time we arrive where we are going, but we haven't set off those alarms!
I handed the woman my boarding pass, she scanned it - looked a bit startled, reached over to the guy next to her, took his pen and then scribbled on my boarding pass. Then she looked at me and told me I had to go back to the BA ticket counter. Uh oh. I turned and stepped back a couple feet and waited to see what happened with Mel's boarding pass. Ditto. We went back to the BA ticket counter.
There was a sign there saying that all passengers to Kiev, Moscow, L'viv, and a few other places in the same part of the world, plus somewhere in Africa if I remember correctly, needed to recheck their boarding passes. Now why could they have not actually said that on the screen at the kiosk, or on a sign beside the line we'd stood in for about 20 minutes? Grrrrr. Big grrrr. I handed the woman my boarding pass, she scanned it through some little machine and handed it back to me. That's it. I asked why we had to do that and she mumbled something about it needed to be rescanned. No answer. The same with Mel's - and everyone else's going to those listed cities. That was not a hand written sign at her counter - it was printed and it was not new. So why the heck did they not warn us on the BA check-in screen? Do they think it makes the passengers less stressed to have to go through that long line at passport control AGAIN???? Listening the whole time to some guy shouting about what must be put into plastic bags???? Get real, people!
We finally got back to the place where we'd been turned back before and zipped right through this time. Now it was time for the 'get undressed and take out your laptop' security control. Due to my new knees, I will never ever again go through this process with any sense of privacy. First, for the first time ever, they made us take out all of Mel's insulin and put it into a little plastic baggy. Well, at least one bottle - the rest they let through in his carry-on. Grrr. And I had to take out my teeny bottles of eye drops, too. Shoes off, metal off, laptops in trays, purses and bags in trays and I went through the metal scanner and set it off.
I told the woman in Denver who offered to pat me down in private that there was no need to go somewhere private - I've been patted down at Heathrow and after being patted down at Heathrow, well, every where else is nothing at all. It's kind of like after you have a baby you realize that absolutely nothing on your body is private any more (When Kara was born we were at a teaching hospital and I think half the new doctors in the place came in to check and see how far I was along.) Heathrow doesn't just pat you down - they PAT YOU DOWN, every nook and cranny, every bulge and dip. Who knows but what that roll of fat may just be something other than what it looks to be to everyone else in the world! Sigh. It's part of the price I, and every other person who has prosthetic knees, hips, etc. pays to travel through the UK. I understand their fear - they've dealt with the IRA and other terrorist groups for way more years than the US has. But still - at least they could OFFER to maul me in private - I saw those two guys in line waiting their turn, watching and laughing. (Stick my tongue out at them.) I'd rather be patted down like this, than not, when all is said and done - they do a good job at Heathrow in my opinion.
We finally got completely dressed again and wandered down to a waiting area near Starbucks. Mel settled me in to a seat with all the carry-on stuff beside me and took off looking for breakfast and coffee. Our boarding gate was not yet listed, but I could see the board from where I was sitting. I couldn't actually read the board, but I could tell where Kiev was in the list because K I E V is so much shorter than M A R S E I L L E S or even H A M B U R G, and so forth. I was sitting there thinking how wonderful it would be if that was actually our gate, but knowing that the last time we flew out of Heathrow to Kiev our gate was the very farthest gate away that you could possibly get and still be in Terminal 5. In fact, it takes 20 minutes to get there using transport. It must be a kilometer away - I'm NOT joking. I sat there and ate my croissant and drank most of the mocha (how long will it be before I have another???), and watched the two little boys across from me play with their matchbox cars. After being hit in the foot several times by a speeding car, I asked the mother how old they were. The youngest was almost 3. And I thought of Stirling and smiled.
Mel wandered around awhile. He gets antsy while I get glued to my seat in nerves. He came back, I looked at the board above and behind him and said - hey, we've got a gate! I stood up and started to get stuff ready to haul and he said it's gate A9. Huh? I looked at the number where we were sitting - A9. Not possible. heh heh Yes, possible. Thank you, Lord! He answered my unspoken prayer - we were already at our gate and didn't have to hike our way half-way to London to get to our gate. Yipee.
We arrived in Kiev. A good flight. We walked down the stairs, into the bus, drove to the terminal, got out of the bus, walked up the stairs and in through the door marked ARRIVALS. Passport control was busy - 4 planes had recently landed - but the lines seemed to be moving pretty quick. I chose a line and we stood. Now Mel and I have stood in one of those lines for almost an hour, with people kind of gently shoving and pushing, trying to make it go faster or for them to get ahead of you. This time was quite different. More orderly (could it be because there were so many Germans from one of the other planes - that is something I really like about Germans - they are very orderly). I don't know what it was for sure, but the lines moved much quicker and everyone seemed to be in fairly good moods.
Mel and I went up together - first time we've done that, but with the question as to whether we'd be allowed in or not on our minds, I just went up with him. No one else had been turned away. We handed the officer our passports, she looked at them, ran them through the scanner, stamped Mel's, handed it to him, stamped mine, handed it to me, and we walked through. The easiest we have ever gone through passport control in 12 years of doing it. Wow! I felt like I was in Western Europe there for a couple minutes! Memories of the first time went flashing through my mind and I couldn't help but think - Ukraine has finally come into the modern world! Wow again. Seriously - wow.
So, now it is over an hour later than when I started writing. We've been in Kiev for parts of 3 days and will leave on the train tonight for Kherson. We don't know how long we'll be in Ukraine this time, due to the change in the law. It could be 90 days or it could be 180 days - we aren't sure what the local OVIR will allow us. We do know we'll be going home in November for our regularly scheduled HMA, if not sooner.
Am I glad to be back? I don't know. When we get back to Kherson I will start sorting and packing and getting things ready in case we have to leave in 90 days again. The law says we are allowed in the country only 180 days, then we have to leave for 180 days. After the first 90 days of the 180 days in, we have to be registered as usual - but they can refuse to renew our registration. So, we have to be prepared.
A week before we left in April I was thinking about how 'normal' and 'comfortable' I have become living here in Ukraine. Two days before we left we got word of this new law and everything has changed. God keeps reminding me that this world is not my home so don't put down roots any where. This is very difficult emotionally, but it is reality.
So, now we wait and see what happens next.
I hope I can sleep better tomorrow night in our own bed!!!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
"like ripple marks in sand"
nightskyhunter.com As anyone who knows me, or reads my blog, knows - I am very interested in the stars, the sky, the aurora, clouds and just all sorts of things that happen or are seen above our heads, day or night. SpaceWeather.com has had some very interesting photos recently on NLCs, or, Noctilucent Clouds.
NLCs are being seen farther and farther south the past couple of years, and scientists are not sure why. Seen only in the northern latitudes previously, now they are being sighted as far south as Colorado and Virginia. Actually, no one is certain of what they are and why they form. Sightings of these clouds date back only a bit more than 100 years. Did they happen before that? If so, why does no one mention them? It is a puzzle!
I am hoping that Mel and I can get out around "after sunset" one of these evenings when it is clear and look for them here. The past few evenings it has been cloudy and even rainy (Yea!). There is also a problem here of the sky being filled with smoke, which produces very beautiful orange skies and magenta-ish suns which can actually be looked at with the naked eye, but make it more difficult for seeing the stars or anything else above our heads. I've written (ranted?) about how I don't understand this love of burning wheat fields, dead leaves, garbage, etc. before, so I won't go into that now. :):) But is sure would be nice to have a clear evening sky once in awhile!
If you read this and live in a northern latitude (South Dakota?! or even the mountains of Colorado!), take some time over the rest of this summer to go out in the evenings and gaze toward the heavens. You might be fortunate enough to see these clouds for your very own self - or even the aurora!
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Clouds
painting by Tim Cox
www.timcox.com/
March 1, 2006
Gray clouds hang dark and heavy over the city. At daybreak today the streets were filled with large filthy puddles that cars splashed through noisily and people walked around or jumped over. Water dripped off grapevine branches on the balcony and drops hung precariously from several of the security bars before suddenly falling to the ground two floors below. It is March 1 in Kherson. We have seen the sun once in the past seven days, and with it a glimpse of blue sky before the clouds closed over once more.
About an hour after my 2.5 mile walk this afternoon, I took a 10 minute rest in the bedroom. Cheyenne came in, jumped up on top of my side and curled up in the hollow between my ribs and hip. As I lay there, eyes closed, I could hear the sound of splashing water as the cars rushed by out on Rosa Luxemburg Street. Almost immediately that sound brought to my memory a day in Woodland Park many years ago.
We lived on the corner of West Street and Highway 24, right in the heart of the little town center. That corner is now a business building and parking lot, but at the time we lived there a small gas station and the little summer cottage we rented were still in existence. Several times that summer we had a good rain shower and afterward I could hear the sound of the cars driving by on wet pavement as they rushed through town. I was much younger then, in my late 20’s, with three pre-school children at home all day, cooped up in the house due to the weather.
How well I remember looking out the front window on those rainy days. Woodland Park is situated in a Y-shaped valley near the top of Ute Pass. Directly to the east is a beautiful view of Rampart Range. I remember two things quite distinctly about that summer – the incredibly beautiful sight of the gray clouds drifting low and covering the top of the Range like wisps of whipped cream piled high, and the sound of thunder reverberating back and forth across the valley. Even today it brings happy shivers when I think about it.
There is nothing quite like a summer rain shower high in the Rockies of Colorado. Each geographical area has its own smell in wet weather or dry. I have special memories of the smell of rain on the hot prairie sand and grass out east of Colorado Springs, special memories of the smell of rain on the muskeg and tundra in Alaska. And yes, even special memories with the smell of rain here in Kherson. But none of those memories can compare to the memory of the smell of rain high in a mountain valley in the Colorado Rockies.
A summer rainstorm is usually a summer thunderstorm. Brilliantly white against a deep cornflower blue sky, the clouds billow high above the mountain peaks, roiling and growing ever higher and wider as warm air from the valley floors rises to meet the cold air above the highest peaks. The reflected sunlight from the brilliant white clouds is almost blinding, yet streaked against the flat bottoms is the first hint of gray and shadow.
One late summer Sunday afternoon in the early 1990’s we visited friends up at Sangre de Cristo Seminary, southwest of Westcliffe. As we walked out their front door the first thing we saw to the east were the biggest thunderhead clouds I have ever seen, forming over the hot prairies west of Pueblo, fifty miles to the east of us. The clouds rose thousands of feet into the air, huge columns of white, billowing and growing with incredible speed, reaching higher and wider at every moment. We drove back to our home in Westcliffe, watching the clouds the whole time. After eating a quick meal, we drove over to the cemetery west of town and parked in the open area where the view to the east was clear of buildings or lights. Several other people had arrived before us, and more arrived over the next two or three hours.
As the sun set in the west, turning the clouds from white to gold, to orange, and finally gray, we began seeing lightening flashing within the clouds. Huge bolts in pink and lavender were lighting up the clouds from within, while long, narrow bolts of yellow and white were shooting out of the tops of the clouds toward space. Directly above us and to the west the sky was completely clear with thousands of stars pinpricking the night sky with twinkling light. Absolute silence surrounded us, broken only by the occasional murmur of quiet voices or the sound of a car engine on the highway a mile away. As the clouds drifted to the east they continued to grow larger, not smaller, for almost two hours before finally drifting completely out of view behind the Wet Mountains. I knew that the beauty we were watching, the majestic power of God revealed in this small way in nature, was only part of the story. Surrounded by absolute silence, our eyes beheld incredible beauty. But underneath those clouds crashing fury reigned. We learned later that several small tornados touched down and hail caused several thousands of dollars worth of damage. Heavy rains also caused local flooding and lightening hit several buildings.
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