Colorado is home to an outstanding variety of amazing natural experiences, from our plentiful wildlife to surprisingly diverse weather patterns and phenomena. Having grown up in a seemingly (for a young kid) banal region of the country in terms of “exciting” nature, moving to Colorado brought me endless wonder at what the natural world had to offer. Living here in the mountains is like living full-time in a natural science classroom.

One such aspect of living in this classroom that has intrigued me since I took up residence is the weather and its ever-changing and oft unpredictable nature. My earliest experiences in Boulder were tremendous summer thunderstorms. A summer thunderstorm can take a 90 degree day down to 40 degrees in minutes, dropping sizable accumulations of hail, then back up to 75 for the evening once the clouds blew out. My second winter brought the converse of dramatic changes as I enjoyed the comfort of a few days over 80 degrees in January, a mere two weeks after a spell of highs around 0. Lets just say the folks who built the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder knew what they were doing when they chose the location for their headquarters.

One phenomenon that we can enjoy year-round are inversions. They happen all over the world, in all manner of environments, but are displayed most dramatically in the mountains. Typically, air is warmer closer to the earth’s surface due to solar radiation heating the ground, then gradually cooling as it moves higher to a less dense atmosphere. Inversions occur for a number of reasons, but mostly due to warm fronts moving in that trap the cold air below, which in turn keeps cloud layers (and pollution as well) stuck over the area of the inversion. While cloud layers are generally benign, the trapping of excess pollution can be deadly, as experienced during the Great Smog of London in 1952 that caused an estimated 10-12,000 deaths.

Summer often provides a long spell of relatively stable weather here in the mountains, with more noticeable inversions occurring from fall through spring. However, occasionally we are granted these grand displays in the warmer months. They can also be a bit more dramatic with the more volatile seasonal thunderstorms being trapped as opposed to the flat blankets that bring our snows.

In the case of this week’s accompanying image, I had traveled up to Rocky Mountain National Park one stormy afternoon in July of 2020 in hopes of getting a lucky break in the weather for some evening wildlife photography. While it looked like I might get my wish on the drive up with the clouds seeming to break up over the mountains, as I descended into Estes valley I was greeted by a wall of gray that seemed to creep uphill from the eastern plains. Driving up Old Fall River Road didn’t make me feel any better, but as I neared the top I began to see patches of blue amid the dark gray.

I made my turn eastward and homeward, and began the climb to the high point of the road when the gray began to turn gold with the evening sun. Sure enough, as I neared the Gore Range overlook, I emerged into a glorious summer view. I had reached the western edge of the storm and sat awestruck by the scene before me. The massive cloudbank was undulating at the natural “T” of the east/west Big Thompson Valley and the north/south Poudre Valley, but the western view was clear as a bell. Looking south and east, the clouds were below my horizon, with the next valley south of the Continental Divide spilling its excess into the miasma below me. I sat with a handful of other visitors basking in the stunning beauty of the phenomenon for quite a while before the setting sun gave the clouds cause to rise higher with the cooling air of evening once again obscuring the view. Not long after, I got back in the car and continued my gray journey home, heart and soul filled like the “cup” that is our grand back yard, overflowing with the beauty of the world.

For information about James DeWalt Photography, check out https:// jamesdewaltphotography.com.