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While the Trump Administration believes that our northern neighbors are a security threat, I certainly appreciate the cool, dry air that they sent this way (no tariffs attached).  This morning, it felt more like late September than late June along the Colorado Front Range. This welcome change was the product of high pressure over the Pacific Northwest and low pressure over the Northern Plains.  Between these atmospheric pumps, the pleasant Canadian air was driven southward, displacing the heat that has plagued us for the past week or so.  Colliding with that heat, the cool air may spawn thunderstorms later today. Unfortunately, our respite will be brief and the southwestern atmospheric ridge will reclaim the Front Range by Monday.  In the meantime, we'll enjoy highs in the upper seventies and low eighties and overnight lows in the upper fifties (F).  My personal thanks to Canada for the refreshing air, however short it's visit.

The atmospheric ridge that has been building over the Desert Southwest this past week has spread northward to the Colorado Front Range.  We reached an afternoon high of 100 degrees F yesterday and expect to exceed that mark today. Beneath this high pressure dome, air sinks and heats up.  In addition, cloud development is suppressed and Pacific cold fronts are shunted to the north of the dome, reducing any chance of precipitation.  Highs in the Desert Southwest have exceeded 110 degrees F at lower elevations (e.g. in Phoenix and Las Vegas) and overnight lows have barely dipped below 90 degrees F.  To the east, across the Southern Plains and lower Mississippi Valley, the heat is less intense but is exacerbated by humidity (with dew points in the mid seventies), producing a heat index near 100 degrees F. Fortunately, the higher elevation and drier air along the Front Range enhances radiative cooling at night and our overnight lows are falling into the low-mid sixties (s...

Due to the hot, dry weather (and primarily due to reduced water release from upstream reservoirs), the South Platte River was very low this morning, attracting a variety of waders and shorebirds; among these were great blue herons, snowy egrets, black-crowned night herons, killdeer and spotted sandpipers. While focusing in on one of the great blues, I watched as he suddenly jabbed into the tall riverside grass and turned back with a small mammal in his formidable bill; too large to be a field mouse, I suspect it was a meadow vole or a young muskrat.  After dipping it the river to moisten the fur, the heron tilted his bill skyward and swallowed the victim in a single gulp; he then resumed stalking the shallows for his next snack. Though we often watch herons and egrets in wetlands and along shorelines, feasting on small fish or aquatic invertebrates, we are undisturbed by their natural activity.  But when a large heron grabs a small mammal and swallows it whole, we empathize wi...

Wandering about our Littleton farm this morning, I noticed a yellow object in a swath of wood mulch.  Thinking it was a toy left behind by one of my grandsons, I walked over for a closer look and found that it was a yellow, sponge-like mass, broken by a few orange creases; frankly, it resembled a cheese omelet. In fact, it was Fuligo septica, commonly known as scrambled eggs slime mold (or, if you prefer, dog vomit slime mold).  One of the more abundant species of slime molds, it is a member of the plasmodial group, characterized by sprawling masses of fused amoebic cells; once the cells congregate, their cell walls break down and the resulting structure is a cytoplasmic bag with thousands of nuclei.  The cellular slime molds, on the other hand, produce a mass in which the amoebic cells retain the integrity of their cell walls.  In both groups, fruiting structures eventually form, releasing spores that mature to form individual amoebic cells. Once included in the Fun...

While birds and birding are the subjects of most posts in this blog, I am personally most interested in ecosystems and in the landscapes that they occupy.  Landscapes are the products of geology, tectonic forces and erosion, the latter occurring primarily by the action of water or ice.  Terrestrial ecosystems reflect the underlying geology and topography, the regional climate and the availability of water (in the form of precipitation or surface water brought in by streams). It is with this knowledge that I focus on watersheds as I travel about our country or the globe and even pay close attention to them within my home cities.  Water, after all, is both essential to life and the primary architect of natural landscapes.  Understanding the regional topography requires that we know its component watersheds, from the main rivers to their smallest tributaries. In the U.S., some States greatly assist our effort by using road signage to demarcate the watersheds (North Caro...

Today marks the summer solstice, the beginning of the astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere.  Some of us have already had enough oppressive summer heat and look forward to the mild days and crisp nights of fall.  In the meantime, we often escape (at least in our minds) to cooler climes, a sentiment I shared in June of 2011. See: Carrabassett Flashbacks

Yesterday, as I flew from Missouri to Colorado, our route took us across the central latitudes of Kansas.  The low morning sun angle and clear skies provided ideal conditions for observing the topography below and I got a good look at the Smoky Hills. The Smoky Hills Province of the Great Plains stretches across north-central Kansas and into south-central Nebraska.  It is characterized by low hills that have been sculpted from Cretaceous bedrock by the tributaries of the Smoky Hill, Saline, Solomon and Republican Rivers (south to north).  That bedrock, deposited within and along a Cretaceous Sea that once covered most of the Great Plains region, is comprised of three bands: Dakota Sandstone, Greenhorn Limestone and Niobrara Chalk (east to west). Those who drive across Kansas on Interstate 70, cross the southern portion of the Smoky Hills Province between Salina and Hays; there, some ridges of the Province are adorned with turbines of the massive Smoky Hills Wind Farm....