Storms in the Rockies

There is nothing half-hearted about weather in the West. Extremes are the order of the day.

Last week, I headed east on Colorado's Route 160 after my early morning exploration of Mesa Verde National Park, thankful that I was finally leaving the oven that was the “Four Corners,” where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. The mountains on the horizion promised cooler weather at last.

Durango was the first stop – a well-preserved, chic, and busy town in southern Colorado. For the first time in days, temperatures were tolerable. I enjoyed walking around the main street and driving through some of the historic residential neighborhoods, then returned to the road to continue on to Pagosa Springs, as the route rose into the Southern Rockies. I crossed the Continental Divide via the spectacular Wolf Creek Pass in the San Juan National Forest, and turned southeast towards Alamosa.

Ominous clouds started to gather over the peaks as I approached La Veta Pass, which takes the road over the eastern Rocky Mountain mountains into Walsenberg and down to I-25. At first they were a pleasant diversion. The land was so flat that it was easy to see where the rain was already falling. The storms looked pretty serious but, at least so far, it looked like my route was going to successfully skirt the worst of it.

 
However, as I started the climb into the pass, the first drops appeared on the windshield. Then the rain became steady, but no one slowed down very much. When the hills disappeared into a gray torrent, cars started to slow, although the 18-wheelers continued to roar past my car. I finally pulled over to the side and turned on my hazards when my wipers, going at full tilt, made absolutely no impact on the amount of water on the windshield – I couldn't see a thing.

I waited. And waited. No let-up. I watched rivulets turn into small rivers along the dirt pull-out. I worried about being caught in a flash flood, something news reports always warn about in this region, but the water seemed to be successfully disappearing somewhere behind my car. When I could at least see one hill in front of me, I set out again but pulled over around the next curve with several other out- of-state cars unused to the force of this kind of storm.

This happened several times through the pass – the world would disappear into a grey shroud, the biggest drops of unrelenting rain I have ever seen would pelt down upon my car. I was happy they weren't hailstones. Huge washes of water crossed the road and carved out a streambed at the edges of the dirt pull-out where several of us had stopped. Finally, after about an hour of starts and stops, my fellow travelers and I felt confident that we could continue on and left the safety of the side of the road.

My friend Joey, a childhood friend and Colorado resident who joined me for the final leg of my P2P tour, insisted that this was normal for the Rockies. And, sure enough, the mornings dawned with sparkling blue skies; wispy clouds appeared by midday; and by afternoon towering thunderheads dumped torrents of rain somewhere or other, driving people off the roads and into shelter.

Impressive. Scary. I'm not sure I could stand the constant excitement of life here in the Front Range.