Very Sad End To Year, 2022 To Begin Stormy...

I mentioned the big Colorado wildfire in my last blog.   I knew it had to be big just by looking at the satellite views.  Since it was so windy, no aerial views were available until today.  And the daylight views revealed damage much worse than from a tornado.  Whole subdivisions were burned down to the concrete.  

If you zoom in, you can see nothing is left but chimneys.  Also note that the few trees remained standing and green.  This was a grass fire, not a forest fire.    I've set up a 4 hour sequence of satellite views that captured the explosive growth of the smoke plume.  The top view starts around noon with the next 3 being one hour apart.  Note the shadow casted on the northern side of the plume.

The cause of the fire apparently was sparks from power lines downed by 100+ mph winds. Yikes.

These are current views from my son's (Rob) house in Longmont.  If only the snow could have come yesterday before the fires.  Since they have not had any rain or snow for weeks, the grasses were brown & dry, perfect fuel.

The long stalled upper trough off the West coast is on the move bringing down a new surge of Arctic air.   That airmass will plow into unseasonably warm and humid air over the SE creating the potential for a severe weather outbreak on New Year's Day.   SPC has highlighted the area most likely to see bad storms.

The timing for us brings the highest rain chance after 3 pm and before midnight with the cold air pouring in before Sunday daybreak.  

We easily shattered another record today.  My backyard temperature gage recorded almost 85  on this last day of the year.  That's way too warm and has my grapefruit tree sprouting new leaves.  I think most of us will welcome the cooldown coming.  Seeing that the core of the cold will stay to our north, I am not doing anything yet in my yard.  We'll have another day to see if any protection is needed on the South Shore.  Those of you who live north of Lake P. can expect a freeze for Monday morning.  Finally,

It's another sad way to end 2021.  Betty White passed away at age 99, 17 days shy of reaching 100.   What a classy, funny lady she was.   She was great on  the Mary Tyler Moore sitcom, but I laughed the hardest on Golden Girls when she acted naïve to Blanche's sexy lady role.  Sad that she's gone, but happy I was able to enjoy her long career.  Update on the coming cold tomorrow PM.  Stay tuned!