MILE HIGH METEOROLOGY
What CRAAAZEEE weather this place has! It has seriously been the story of this whole vacation.
You think Rochester weather is changeable? Denver weather is like Lou Ferrigno to Rochester’s 99 pound weakling. Glenn Johnson and Kevin Williams would be having a wet dream if they were here the past couple of weeks.
What amazes me most is the laissez-faire attitude of the locals. They say things like “Oh look, another passing thunderstorm”, while I am scrambling to fit my sorry, outta shape ass under one of the beds in my sister in laws house. Seriously! I am freaking out like Noah before the great flood, and everyone else is like “wow, isn’t the lightning pretty?”
In the last week, we have almost had at least a thunderstorm a day, and compared to the ones in the Roc, these are like armageddon is upon us. In Rochester, you get a thunderstorm where maybe you get one lightning bolt and clap of thunder that is within a mile of where you are maybe once. Here, you get four or five within a minute of each other.
One of the storms was last Thursday night. We had just settled in to watch the first Broncos pre-season game, when something happened that I had NEVER experienced–all of our cell phones suddenly blared out an alert that we had a flash flood warning. Within a minute, the skies opened and the show was on. We thought our little Toyota Yaris parked on the street in front of sister in laws home was going to be washed down the street into the local playground. We all went out to the back porch to watch the lightning for a minute, when all of a sudden, a clap of lightning came so loud that we could hear the electricity shoot by our ears on the way to the ground in a nearby back yard. At that point, it didn’t matter that I was blind…I beat everyone back in the house as if I teleported myself back in there.
It’s not just the storms either. The weather is just plain unpredictable. You start off the day with perfect, sunny skies all day and no wind, then a front moves through, the temperature drops 20 degrees, winds pick up to 30 or 40 miles an hour, the skies turn dark as sackcloth and you get one of these monster thunderstoms with torrential rains where everyone is looking for funnel clouds, then a half hour later it is a perfect sunny day again.
Luckily, tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful for our final day of the vacation. I hope it is because we have a huge day planned.
The whole fam damily is going out on the boat in Chatfield reservoir one last time for some fun and tubing, which we haven’t had the chance to do yet because of the wild weather. After that, it’s our final dinner together of the trip–the Golden Corral. I have barely eaten for the past two days in preparation for that visit. Then, we are wrapping up the big day with our first ever Family Fantasy Football draft.
This is a much anticipated event, mainly for my brother in law Bryant and I. We are the only two fantasy football junkies in the family, and the other six members of the league, my father and mother in law, sister in law, my wife, and Bryant’s father and step mother, are all going to be playing in their first league. It should be like taking candy from babies for Bryant and I, but you never know.
After that, it will be one final time in the in-laws hot tub, and back to sisters to pack and get ready for the long trip home. Oh, and then on the way out, we have to pick up a 21 year old cat that my wife agreed to take off her ex boyfriend Robert’s hands, and take her back with us to Rochester, along with our two wiener dogs. Ought to be an interesting trip back for sure.
This will be my final column until we are back in Rochester on Wednesday night or Thursday. Please don’t go anywhere. I promise I will get back to sports next time.
