How Do We Predict the Weather at Our House?

This is Pikes Peaks - the way it looks almost all winter.

The shortest answer is we look out our front window and watch the weather come to us!!

The house faces directly west and looks at Pikes Peak which is the mountain that inspired the song "America the Beautiful".  It is 14,115 feet above sea level and one of the over 50 mountains in Colorado over 14,000 feet.  

When a storm is coming we can watch the clouds float over the mountain, obscuring the peak.  As the storm gets closer, more of the mountain disappears.  We can usually judge how much time we have before the storm hits.  Actually we play a game to see who can guess the exact time of the first snowflake or rain drop. 

At 8:00 AM the clouds started creeping over the mountain. 

10:00 AM

11:00 AM

12:00 Noon. The storm arrived alittle while ago and we only received about 1" total with this storm. 

3:00 PM. The clouds are still covering the foothills, but our snow has started disappearing already. 

Next morning we are back to normal but the foothills are still dusted.  All that will be gone by noon except for the accumulation at the very top!  And another day with a clear blue sky.

 We are on the east side of the mountain range.  All the ski areas are on the west side and get the brunt of the storms and snow  This side of the range does not get even 1/4th of the amount of snow the west side does. 

So we have the best of many worlds.  Snow occasionally and being 6000+ feet above sea level we have low humidity and cooler summers.  PERFECT!!