Apparently I live for weather drama

Beat accused me of this when I showed too much enthusiasm for the Wind Times

An awkward run on tired post-100-mile legs after our first April snowstorm.

Sometime in my early 40s, I developed a new and unexpected personality trait — nesting. Throughout my 20s I was happy to lay my head just about anywhere and treated my meager possessions as expendable. For much of my 30s, Beat and I lived in a small apartment in the Bay Area, which I thought of less as home and more “where we sleep when we’re not having adventures.” Moving into a house in Colorado undoubtedly prompted more nesting habits, but I still didn’t feel like much of a homebody until the pandemic shifted my cloistering instincts into overdrive. After all, I come from a long line of Utah Mormons. I received an early education in home canning, sewing, and handicrafts. My People started prepping before prepping was cool — we’ve been stocking up for the End Times since the 19th century. Some of that was bound to rub off on me.

I pondered my pivot toward nesting as we were slammed with yet another extreme weather event. This was the second in less than a month to demand extensive preparations. Last month, the challenge was 3+ feet of heavy snow during “Snowpocalypse.” In keeping with the End Times theme, I’d call this month’s event the “Wind Times” if I thought anyone would get the joke. I suppose now that I have explained my bad joke, I can use Wind Times.

What’s the big deal about wind? Mountain wave events (a fascinating phenomenon in which strong jet stream winds are forced over the mountains beneath a temperature inversion and “crash” onto the lower altitudes like waves) occur frequently in Colorado. But this storm was forecast to be especially strong, widespread, and prolonged. Models predicted 18 hours of high winds with gusts topping 110 mph. This would be a category 3 hurricane if we were located on the Atlantic Coast.

I never followed up with my second half of the Snowpacalyspe story. A summary of the first half: On “Pi Day” — March 14 — much of the region was slammed with a heavy spring snowstorm. My house, located on a private road in the foothills above Boulder, was near the bullseye of this storm. By March 15, I was buried in 38” of white cement. Beat was away in Alaska, so I was all alone. I had stocked up on the essentials — drinking water, pasta, and toilet paper — and hauled a dozen loads of firewood from my garage to my house so I could enjoy the spoils of literally being stuck inside my home. (So cozy!)

I was only happy about this living arrangement for about 12 hours. Then I felt claustrophobic and frantic that I wouldn’t get out in time for my March 22 flight to Fairbanks so I could participate in the White Mountains 100. Instead of cozying up next to the wood stove, I started digging, one strenuous shovel-load at a time. It took me two hours to clear a path to my garage for more firewood. The driveway, which is about 100 feet long, promised a much more arduous effort. The road stretched this challenge to the realm of impossibility. On March 16, I tested my odds of walking out. I strapped on snowshoes and began punching a path through the hip-deep snow, which had started to melt and refreeze at night. The thick surface crust wasn’t strong enough to hold my weight but was strong enough to trap my feet in place. It took me 20 minutes to hike a quarter mile downhill. After just 20 minutes, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even justify this futile effort as taper-appropriate exercise less than a week before my hundred-miler.

On March 17, I was outside working on my driveway when neighbor John passed in his large (heavy!) diesel truck. I cheered because surely, John could get us out of this mess. Within 100 feet of my house, he had already gotten hopelessly stuck. This happened at 9 a.m. For the next eight hours (with one short lunch break) the two of us would spend our Sunday swimming through waist-deep snow, rigging up cables for the winch, breaking straps, rigging up more cables, breaking branches, digging, jacking up tires one at a time (using the tire chains as leverage), and filling the muck holes with firewood. It was exhausting, back-wrenching, finger-crushing labor for which we were rewarded with all of 0.25 miles of plowing “progress.” I started to wonder if my only hope was my snow shovel and the inevitable melt (although judging by how much snow was still around on April 1, I would have had to shovel myself out before spring melted me out.)

Late on March 18, John informed me he’d finally broken through. I was shocked. Sunday’s labor was so hard that I did not expect him to try again. Between John and two other neighbors who did the lion’s share of work (one with a snow-blower!), we had cleared a mile of cement to the county road. The only thing between me and a March 19 physical therapy appointment (which I felt was crucial now that I had all but broken my back under the labor of Snowmaggedon) was several dozen feet of half-hardened cement in my driveway.

After my work shift wrapped up at 8 p.m., I dragged my snow shovel outside to finish the arduous job in the rapid freeze of darkness. The snow had become so compact that it was no longer possible to move with a shovel. I had to use the metal edge of the shovel to break off chunks, put the shovel down, and pick up each chunk like a rock to place on top of my six-foot-high piles.

It became so late, and I was so tired, but the joy and jubilation I felt when I finally broke through my snow wall was sublime. I’d unlocked a new level of accomplishment. For five days, while most of my friends thought I was cozy at home and relaxing ahead of my 100-mile race, I had done nothing but eat and sleep and do hard physical labor. I was more exhausted than I had been after the weekend I spent running 80 miles near Moab. But the rewards of this endurance effort were unquestionably greater because I accomplished something tangible. I was FREE!

Indeed, with both Snowpocalypse and the White Mountains 100 behind me now, I look to the storm for self-satisfaction. Sure, running and hiking 100 miles through the frozen Alaska backcountry in 34 hours was a decent enough accomplishment. But remember that time I dug out my entire driveway?

This brings us to the Wind Times. Back in December 2021, after a particularly dry autumn, a strong wind event downed a power line near the Marshall Mesa trailhead. A lashing wire sparked a grass fire that raced eastward on 100-mph gusts. The Marshall Fire leveled entire neighborhoods and destroyed more than a thousand structures in a matter of hours. Miraculously only two people died. The most destructive wildfire in Colorado's history was an entirely suburban fire (no mountain forests involved) with a range of destruction that few could have anticipated. Since then, Xcel Energy has taken few chances with big wind events. This time around, the utility planned to pre-emptively shut off power for 55,000 customers, of which we were one. We received about three hours of notice for an outage that was likely to last a day or more.

Our house is nearly 100% electric. We have electric underfloor heating, electric appliances, and well water with an electric pump. This means that without power, we have no heat or access to clean water. Power outages are frequent enough up here that each outage leads us to level up our preparations. Just last year, we finally bought a small gas generator that can power a few things — not the microwave or Beat’s espresso machine, but it can power the refrigerator with enough juice left over for the important things, like the massage chair.

After the preemptive power outage commenced at 3 p.m., I sat next to a window so I could peer out at the spruce trees whipping violently in the 50-60 mph gales and listen to the whistling chorus that at times grew to ear-piercing volumes. Our battery-powered Internet allowed me to simultaneously follow #cowx updates on the website formerly known as Twitter and the weather graphs on Windy.com. Windy.com was particularly exciting with its frequent reports of 90 mph gusts in nearby places such as Coal Creek Canyon and Golden. As I announced these numbers to Beat, he accused me of being addicted to weather drama, and I have to admit, he’s not wrong.

Weather drama is a unique source of adventure — one where I can be cozy at home, doing the nesting work that allows me to feel safe and secure, and still feel like I’m challenging the unknown. Stepping outside — even briefly — into 60 mph wind gusts brings a rush of adrenaline. Venturing outside to secure loose items before sprinting back inside generates enough physical stimulation to keep me satisfied when I decide not to go running on this day because I don’t want to be hit with a flying deer.

The camping-at-home aspect of power outages also feels cozy and satisfying. On Sunday morning, with the power still out after 18 hours, Beat and I headed into town to meet Beat’s former boss, wife, and college-age son, who were visiting from California to check out the university. Half of the traffic lights in town weren’t functioning, and more than two-thirds of Pearl Street businesses were closed “due to inclement weather.”

More than 150,000 customers throughout the Denver metro area were without power following the storm — the preemptive shutoffs plus all of the unplanned outages caused by the storm. Still, we wandered the quiet streets until we found an open restaurant that didn’t even have a wait time, and enjoyed a civilized brunch that tasted like heaven after drinking instant coffee that had been heated on a camp stove earlier that morning. We tried to assure our friends that “Boulder isn’t always like this” — meaning 90 mph winds and bitter cold in April and no power. “Seriously, it can be 70 degrees in January. 300 days of sunshine!” I’m not sure they were convinced, but the son seemed stoked about moving to Boulder — which is considerably farther away from his parents than UC Santa Cruz, so I can see the appeal.

We said our goodbyes, stopped by a crowded gas station to buy another five gallons of gasoline for our generator, and drove back to our frigid home with a chainsaw in the back just in case we needed to clear downed trees along the way. After we’d fired up the wood stove, we started the long task of heating enough water to take bucket showers later that evening.

I went out for a two-hour run, and when I returned at 4 p.m., so had the power! Xcel had made threats of not turning it back on before Monday or even Tuesday, so this felt like a wonderful gift. Still, as I stood next to the wood stove with my phone scrolling #cowx updates, I admit I felt cheated. I had been looking forward to that bucket shower and another night in the dark. I can hardly say why. I suppose it would have felt like another accomplishment. Proving, once again, that could not only survive the Wind Times, but thrive!

Of course, I took a real shower and then cooked a real dinner. Just as I was about to settle back into taking this modern life for granted — the power blipped off again at dusk! Clearly, Xcel is testing my resolve.

No need to fret. There are still plenty of weeks left in spring for mountain wave events and bomb cyclones and May snowstorms. Then comes the summer monsoon with drenching afternoon thunderstorms and electric death from the sky. This is followed by the withering autumn months with straight-line winds and terrifying fire weather, and then the intermittent massive snow dumps followed by 60-degree thaws that we call winter. And you know, for a place with “300 days of sunshine,” the weather in Colorado is damn challenging. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, because I live for the drama.