General consensus seems to be so far: somewhat unusual August so far for most; still hot in Colorado, hence the dog-days someone mentioned in the quizzer post which made me think of atmospheric ( no pun) imagery in Lightfoot songs of just such things.
Hot August days, cooler nights, a hint in the air as a portent of autumn waiting in the wings here to commonly appear color-wise in the 3rd week of September, but still hot when I opened this thread. Then it got unseasonably cold and rainy right for a week or so after in Colorado and apparently elsewhere, and here, has not changed yet. I am -sigh- anticipating an early autumn. I hope we have a heck of an Indian Summer ! yahoo I love those...great hiking, though I can't do that anymore on a big scale, but thank my lucky stars I can on a smaller one-lung scale
!
I wonder: does this mean an early winter ? Hope not. Bu,. I love the snow. Just have not done what I want to yet this summer in total.
Sounds like most of you are smelling fall in the air, or feeling it, or seeing the fleeting signs of it coming..... as soon as I say that, like was said above, it'll be hotter than hades again in a week. More of dog days to go.... I 'spect....
We almost always get a
light snow in
September, and a
substantial October
snow in Colorado ritualistically for Halloween. There is a hilarious list called: "You know you are a Coloradoan if...." and it mentions as one of the "you might be a red-neck if...."-type humour items this gem:
"You know you are a Colorado'an if all your childhood memories of Halloween costumes included a down-coat under it per your Mom, and your
de rigeur Colorado Native massive 8-pound Frankensteinian leather off-trail backpacking and/or climbing boots- [popular in the 70's as a school uniform of sorts , coupled with carefully-faded jeans, plaid flannel or wool for "Real Climbers" shirts,
blue down vests ala John Denver, as well as Michelin-man poofy-grade
Blue (again) Down jacket over the vest, and topped off with a hilarious-looking Tibetan boiled-wool colorfull balaclava with ear flaps, yes...this was cool out here then....]
Yup,
snow would be in the air by late September, even if the snowline starts at 6600 ft. like my house location, or 9,600 where I lived at home in High School here. The leaves'll turn to
gold and
yellow-
ish if temps are just right and tree-sugars in the aspens are right, and we don't have an early hard-freeze, not just the predictable frost-tinging of September over-night. Beautiful month in Colorado. And for the last week, its all been in the air, despite no phyical signs of it except for the heady
autumn leaf aroma.
~geo steve