My sister and nephew, both avid skiers, had to switch out their skis to adjust to the snow that is much wetter than Colorado's.
As for here, it's so different from what it used to be. When I was a kid, we made skating rinks in the back yard; that ice would last Oct-March. Now we get a storm here and there, but not the months-long protracted winter that we used to get. It's been thirty years since I last bought snow tires or chains. I bought my first front-wheel-drive vehicle four years ago, I still haven't found out how it drives differently in snow. We'll get a blast of snow and ice, two weeks later we'll be in the furnace. 100-year events and 500-year floods are becoming almost routine.
Meanwhile, our 21 thousand fracking wells are pumping garbage into the air and water. The number of respiratory cases my doctor sees has increased to a scary degree. Bag limits on game fish have been cut in half due to weird diseases and angling pressures, livestock in fracking areas are showing some bizarre symptoms. And we had an earthquake last week, rare in the extreme for this part of the state.
Yesterday there were three tornados in the county. We're presently under a tornado warning for another half hour. It's chilly, we've had rain, some small hail to the west and golf-ball sized hail to the north and east. A number of homes have been flooded, streets closed due to the Poudre River being above flood stage for days. They're now warning of a bad mosquito season due to all the standing water we're going to have.
We've been in drought for some time, yet our protests about each fracking well's consumption of millions of gallons of unredeemable water fall on deaf ears. It irritates that a small portion of the mountain snowmelt comes from areas where river water was used to fuel the machines that make snow for skiers. Our farmers get hefty fines for pumping water from their own wells. And then we get flooded. Again.
Somehow, I'm thinking that the day will never come when we can look back and laugh about how silly we were to think that people had anything to do with that whole climate change myth.
Even so, I still wish I could share some water with you. Alas, at present it's much easier to pipeline rotten oil than clean water. Stupid, ain't it?
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