Hanging Out With The Twin Sisters

Winter, albeit a little late seems to be settling into the Front Range and Rocky Mountain National Park. Arctic air that has been staying north in Canada most of the winter, finally found a way to filter down to the Front Range. Most of the arctic air mass settled east of Colorado, but some of it still managed to back into the eastern half of Colorado this weekend and drop the temperatures. The cold air, combined with some light snow made for some pretty dramatic atmospheric conditions in Rocky.

Many times it seems like you are either dealing with clear blue skies at sunrise in Rocky, or beautiful lenticular wave clouds combined with constant 60 mph winds. This particular morning in Rocky Mountain was neither. It was a manageable 16 degrees with almost no wind. Even better, there were lots of clouds swirling over the peaks. So many clouds, that many of the prominent peaks such as Longs Peak, Mt. Meeker and Hallet Peak were engulfed by the clouds. The Twin Sister’s however, were still in view.

Below Estes Park, Ft. Collings, Loveland and Boulder were experiencing snow and single digit temperatures. The upslope storm created enough of an inversion this morning that it was not snowing in Estes Park and it was in fact warmer in Estes Park, then the Front Range towns at lower elevations. Cold foggy air filtered up through the Estes Valley as sunrise rose up out of the fog and snow below creating a short but colorful sunrise over the Twin Sisters formation.