Probably not a lot of folks sad to see 2021 fade into the history books. 2022, as does every New Year, offers a chance at new beginnings, a proverbial blank slate on which to etch the moments of life.
Along the Front Range of Colorado 2021 certainly left its mark on its way out the door. As the Denver Post today proclaimed in one of their stories, climate change met population boom with disastrous results.
The weather forecasts on the night of December 29th had warned of high winds along the Eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains but that in and of itself was not unusual. High winds here are not an unusual occurrence - they even have a name: Chinook winds. Generally they bring warmer temperatures to lower elevations and such was the case as Wednesday would see temps climbing into the 50's in Denver despite the calendar saying it was December and Christmas only five days removed.
Driving north along C-470, the western part of Denver's circumferential highway, the winds were starting to howl and the minivan was being pushed all over the road. Big rigs and semitrucks were already slowing to a crawl and it wasn't more than a couple of minutes after we took the Morrison exit that the first truck was being blown onto its side bringing the highway to a standstill.
Normally we start at the Skunk Hollow parking lot but I had a sense that given the winds the upper Big Soda lake might be something to see so we kept on going to the swim beach parking lot. The car was swaying from side to side in the wind as I parked and out on the lake the conditions took my breath away. Literally. Walking (more like staggering) to the concrete retaining walls around the beach the surface of the lake looked like it was boiling and it was indeed hard to breathe as the wind seemed to suck the air right out of your lungs. You could only face downwind as to look the other way was to get sandblasted. What seemed to be smoke turned out to be the surface of the lake vaporizing and carried high into the sky. Trees were swaying erratically in the strong winds and I thought to myself how fortunate it was that there were no leaves at this time of year or few limbs would be left.
I hadn't set out to take pictures or make a video on this day but conditions were so extraordinary it wasn't long before I had my camera out trying to take as steady a shot as possible while leaning backward into the gale force winds and trying to catch my breath (Gale force winds are defined as between 32 and 63mph - a little further up the road north of Golden wind gusts of 115mph were being recorded).
We quickly retreated to the relative shelter of the Cottonwood Trail. Even here it was eerie to hear the roar of the wind through the treetops. The dry prairie grasses were lying almost flat and as we walked occasional limbs, branches and other debris would tumble down from above. Clouds of flying dust flew overhead and to the north over Green Mountain we noticed a single solitary white cloud stationary against the azure blue of the Colorado winter sky. I remember wondering how any cloud could survive being shredded to bits in such horrendous wind conditions but it did, barely moving or changing shape through much of our early walk.
As we followed the trail from Skunk Hollow several miles to Bear Creek Reservoir we alternated from the comparative safety of the trees to scrambling up and over small hillocks where we were quickly reminded and awed by how strong the wind was blowing. The waters of the reservoir, which sits in a normally sheltered depression, were in turmoil. Sections of the western shore were still frozen and in places geese were seeking shelter on the ice wherever they could find it. They were all pressed as flat as they could facing the same direction into the wind and you could see their flight feathers ruffling with every gust. It was amazing that they were not being blown backward off the ice into the lake but they remained in place. Farther out on the lake you could see random areas of calm which upon closer attention turned out to be sheets of ice that had separated from the shore and were on a perilous journey eventually to crash into the wave-tossed shoreline on the other side of the reservoir.
Making our way back the way we had come that same fluffy white cloud still hovered over Green Mountain. Only now there was an ominous dark billow beneath it streaming off to the east. It was at that point we began to realize that something was amiss. As we continued our walk it became evident that the dark billow was smoke and soon it stretched along much of the eastern horizon. Driving home the winds continued unabated and we passed several overblown trucks. One car had their Yakima roof container blown apart and the poor driver was desperately trying to collect his skis and other belongings from the windswept highway. From a neighborhood park we got a clearer view of the smoke plume streaming from the Boulder area and hurried home to turn on the local news only to find out conditions on the ground were far, far worse than the distant smoke plume would have suggested.
As I write this I can only shake my head at the capriciousness of Mother Nature. This morning we woke to a mantle of white that was two days too late. While I shoveled snow this morning hundreds, if not thousands of my fellow Coloradans were wondering if they still had a home to return to.
The following video is a snapshot of the wind event that would end up causing such extreme fire damage just 30 miles to the north. It will be a long, long time before I can hear the roar of the wind and not think back to this day.
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