The Weather Outside is Frightful

...or at least Wiley thinks so. The poor, old, arthritic little guy crawled under my bed yesterday evening and stayed there, coaxed out only by the promise of a poached egg this morning. Then he went right back into his lair.

Why is Wiley so riled?

THUNDERSNOW!

Yes, on the 16th of August, we've got thundersnow (I still say one of the best potential band names ever... powerful and ominous, yet fluffy.) The clouds rumbled and growled and bellowed all night right over our heads (at least it feels that way when you're nearly 10,000 feet closer to them than at sea level), followed by hail at dawn.

When I woke there was a light dusting of snow and hail everywhere (it started to rain in the last hour, so it's gone now).

There was also a melee on my porch.

My hummingbird feeder was low last night but I thought there was enough to get them through till morning. I was wrong. It was bone-dry and there were eight hummingbirds zipping around it, fighting each other even though they all seemed to know it was empty.

I really wish I'd had my camera, but I left it at work as I'm doing some experiments that hopefully will come to fruition today or tomorrow.

Anyway... I refilled the feeder, feeling bad the poor things were hungry, and all hell broke loose. It was like the Crips and the Bloods in a street war, with the bigger red birds and the smaller blue-green ones harassing each other, divebombing, etc. Jeez. Who knew a little organic sugar in water could turn my porch into Hummingbird South Central??

And I'm as ornery as the birds. It poured rain all yesterday and looks to do the same today. The locals say they've never seen such a wet fall (yes, we're in autumn up here... I've felt the chil in the air and people have been piling firewood up in their yards for the past two weeks) and think we're going to have an early winter with a lot of snow.

They're delighted (the area makes most of its money from skiiing/snowboarding). I'm inconsolable. Even though there won't be snow yet at the lower elevations, the trails are going to be hella muddy, and as for the higher elevations, well... Byers Peak, which I hiked last week, was forecast to get a foot of snow today.

Grr.