No April Fools: Thundersnow

The Elvis statue at the homestead takes on another spring storm, this time thundersnow.

So I was taking a nap this afternoon about 3:30, when there was an enormous boom of thunder. This was the kind that claps off and reverberates for several seconds – what my father once called The Tator Wagon – rattling the house at its foundations. It usually happens in July before a thunderstorm.

But on the first of April in Boulder, after the clap, it turned dark very quickly, and by the time I opened the shade, it was snowing like crazy and the wind was wailing, with the flakes moving quickly, almost horizontal north to south. Old Testament in its force and intensity. The breath of Yahweh.

Turns out we seem to be in the middle of a good old-fashioned thundersnow. Wikipedia, if you trust it, says of thundersnow, “It commonly falls in regions of strong upward motion within the cold sector of extratropical cyclones between autumn and spring when surface temperatures are most likely to be near or below freezing. Variations exist, such as thundersleet, where the precipitation consists of sleet or ice rather than snow.”

That pretty much nails it, since the Front Range is home to “strong upward motion” that brings our major precipitation events each year. Our part of the country lives on this moisture.

Silvio, my Belgian Turvuren named after Mr. Dante, and a breed often used as police dogs by many law enforcement agencies, hustled off downstairs, where I found him huddled in a corner of the basement office. He doesn’t know what thundersnow is, but he doesn’t like it.

Nor will commuters along the Front Range, who will find a snarling, punishing drive home. And we were going to see music in Lyons tonight.

I think I’m going to make some coffee.