Blame It on the Baby

It seems it's always the baby's fault.  Sometimes it's the boy baby's fault and sometimes the little girl's fault.  If I understand correctly, we've been having a La Nina (little girl) winter when the global weather patterns are affected by colder temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.  During a La Nina winter, according to http://library.thinkquest.org, there's more snow and rain on the west coast and unusually cold weather in Alaska while the weather in the rest of the USA is unusually warm with even drought in the southwest and a higher than normal number of hurricanes in the Atlantic.  However, if I understood that lecture and slide show I attended last evening at the Black Bear Ecology Center in Nederland, La Nina is getting tired and weakening and this is the result:

We are finally getting snow--a lot of snow--not only here in Eldora, but in Colorado generally.

 

This was my car about 11 a.m. this morning and it has been snowing lightly all day.

Snow, like a big loaf of bread, on the picnic table covering almost half of the lower pane in the south window.

The dark line three quarters of the way down is the deck railing with snow on top and snow almost up to the railing underneath.

I tried to measure the snow on the deck right outside the front door with a yardstick this morning.  It measured about 19 inches, but there seemed to be a lot more than that out in the meadow and the local ski area made the news this morning with "more than 24 inches" overnight.  Needless to say, they and their powder lovers, were ecstatic.  You can bring up their web cam by going to Eldora Mountain Resort Web Cam if you're interested.  When I did publicity for Midwestern ski areas, a loong time ago, I learned that the optimum temperature for making snow, which all Midwestern ski areas did, was 27F degrees.  My thermometer has been reading about 29F degrees today and I notice now at about 5:30 p.m., as the temperature is dropping, it seems to be snowing harder.  Don't know if that has anything to do with it, but NOAA is predicting possibly another seven inches over night.  Is anyone old enough to remember Al Capp, Li'l Abner and Lower Slobbovia? 


Although the on-line headlines this morning used verbs like "pounding," to describe the storm, it has been absolutely quiet up here in the mountains, so I'm cozy as can be.  I think the snow piled up around the cabin may also be providing some insulation as well...like being in a snow cave.  It is supposed to get down to 13F degrees tonight and then 6F degrees tomorrow night, but it looks as if the winds are going to stay calm.

I can't think any animal would willingly dig itself out of this snow at this depth, and if I did put food out for the fox, it would sink and then soon be covered by the quickly falling snow, so think I'll take a chance and not put food out for the fox this evening although I'll keep my eyes open for him.  He made repeated trips last night, carrying dog food by the mouth full back to the den while I was bringing in wood!  It made me realize that the consistency of pet food is probably not ideal.


Here is another not so great photo from last night.  He always comes so late at night that the photos are underexposed even with the flash.  He had one red eye, which I was able to fix, but one white eye, and there seems to be no way to fix those.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  He looks quite demonic.  Teddee