I may have written this before, but easily the best thing about living in Colorado are the skies (not the skis).
Monday night it was the skies and more. Coming home from work a black, Mordor–like cloud began to extend its hand over Colorado Springs. There wasn’t much else happening in the heavens so I figured it would pass without much excitement, but as its midsection crested the mountains, two very close bolts of lightning got our attention. Little bits of hail began falling a short time later, but you couldn’t really see the hail as it dropped. It was most visible as it bounced back up from the lawn, appearing as kernels of popcorn hopping out of hot oil. After about three minutes that too passed, but it wasn’t long before loud thunks began to resound off the roof as ice the size of golf balls smacked our house. Luckily the damaging hail was quickly gone, but as my son raced outside to collect the large hail he yelled, “Hey Dad, you’ve gotta hear this!”. I wasn’t eager to interrupt the pork tenderloin in front of me, but I joined him only to hear a drumming, rumbling din as if dozens of trains were passing through the valley below.
The storm must have picked up strength as it came down off the heights, for not a mile away houses, cars, trees and whatever was not under shelter was getting just absolutely hammered by the golf balls. (I was told that yet another Sky Sox baseball game was rain cancelled and that water was coming down the stands in rivers.) Eventually the near-setting sun came out and lit up this same evil vapor in a rich, butterscotch shade. The amazing anvil of the super cell reached probably 40 miles over the plains with huge udders of icy, mammatus billowing from its rear flank.
By this time the camera was out and I decided to enjoy the display by heading to a nearby park. Creation was not done dazzling me yet. As I worked my way into the park I noticed huge antlers silhouetted at the top of a hill in the darkening sky. I didn’t have time to creep up on the beasts. The light was failing fast, so I made straight for them. I found seven bucks grazing together, maybe the largest collection of deer antlers I’ve ever seen on the hoof. Three looked like elk, all in velvet.
Now it was dark, the deer trotted over the hill at the approach of me and my pooch, but the evening was not done. The cloud, now well over the eastern plains looked like an engine of lightning with constant internal flashes illuminating it in yellow sheets, ginned up even more with occasional white, spidery bolts.
All in all I enjoyed three hours of Creation strutting her best stuff. I could have topped it off by getting up and seeing the Perseides meteor shower last night, but at 4am, just like years past, I watched the inside of my eyelids instead.
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