The Big Colorado Bomb Cyclone Blizzard of 2019

Bomb Cyclone: "According to NOAA, it "occurs when a midlatitude cyclone rapidly intensifies," or quickly drops in atmospheric pressure, marking the strengthening of the storm. A bomb cyclone, which occurs through the process of bombogenesis, is basically a winter hurricane and the storms strengthen fast." From the Coloradoan.

On March 12th it was warm, sunny and spring-like, on March 13th we were hit by the biggest storm we've had since we lived here.  The moisture started overnight, but it was still warm enough that it was just raining buckets.  At 10am, I left the house to pick Ben up from an overnight at his friend Aaron's house.  A few of the boys from the distance track team had decided to sleepover, so they could do their workout at 3am on the Pinecreek HS track in the POURING rain (so awesome, and totally something I would have done in high school!).  I left to get him when the rain had just turned to snow.  By the time I got to Aaron's, 5 minutes away, it was starting to stick to the roads, and by the time we were home and parked in the garage, what we saw outside our window is in the 2nd picture. BOMB!  It started fast!  We spent the day hunkered down, cozy in our house, watching the snow plaster itself all over everything.  Eventually, we couldn't even see out of most of the windows, and those we could see out of, showed the snow blowing around into drifts.  The houses across the street were barely visible.  Ben and I ventured out in it for just a little while to get some video for Adam, who was working that week in Everett and missed the whole thing.  I mean...it was a really cool weather event!  The boys and I loved it.  By the late evening, it had blown to the east and everything was quiet and peaceful.

The next day we took a walk in the cold sunshine.  Everything was coated in wind-blasted snow, and there were some drifts nearly as tall as Tommy, while other places were blown bare and coated in a thick 1-inch layer of ice.  It was a beautiful, drifty, white world!  School was out for 3 days, just to get the roads cleared and thawed. 

I added pictures at the bottom from the news around the city.  There were a lot of stranded folks out there, since it hit so fast!  The weather here can be so unpredictable, it's hard to listen to the warnings for nothing, but this one was surely not nothing!       

Right after Ben and I got home from Aaron's.

You can see behind Zac how obscured the house across the street was.

I love Ruby's smile and wind-blown ears.

Sheet of ice!

Woodmen Road heading towards Falcon (close to the fields where the older boys used to play their home competitive soccer games).

I-25 between Castle Rock and Monument Hill.