Today we woke up to our roof clapping, the windows singing, and the debris tapping all over our house.  This awakening unfortunately is a fairly common occurrence here on the high plains of Colorado: tremendous wind. Any time we have nice warm weather followed by a cold front, or vice versa, the wind kicks up and blows all over. Britton and I often say “No nice day goes unpunished” for while Colorado is known for its 300 days of sunshine a year, what they leave out is that many of them can be very windy.

The sustained winds are about 35 mph but there are gusts between 60 and 100 mph! It’s just crazy and agitating, especially when you can hear the shingles tearing off the roof, because that means work for Britton. We drove around Greeley just to check out the damage and saw that our neighborhood had some broken fences, lots of missing shingles and more tree damage (after the early snowfall broke a lot of branches).

It’s funny to us when people worry for us about Puerto Rico because it’s a Caribbean island in the middle of a hurricane zone because we have hurricane force winds here in Colorado all the time, especially in the spring and fall. There are often tornadoes that pop up all over the eastern plains, and we even had a major one just 3 or 4 years ago in Windsor (ironic name, I know), a town about 10 miles from Greeley.

Another thing about the crazy winds of Colorado and the plains in general is that it always brings up the tumbling tumbleweeds. We’ve met people who are not from around here who thought that tumbleweeds were fictitious, and part of the western folklore kind of like Paul Bunyon or Tom Sawyer. But, they are very real and roll all around during windstorms like these. While driving, they often tumble and slam into your car grill. They are strange because they look like alien creatures rolling along the prairie.

Tumbleweed that was blown up on our front porch

So, we try to make the best of these days and stay down in the basement where we can’t hear the house being torn apart. After it is all done, we will have to check for and fix any damage to the fence, greenhouse, trees, chairs that have been thrown off our patio and shingles that always take flight.

It’s kind of a strange way to end the year, but I suppose the wind is sort of like nature’s vacuum cleaner doing some last minute work.

We hope this crazy Colorado wind blows in a great new year for everyone! 🙂