The anniversary storm

The flakes fell all day, landing harmlessly on the pavement. Around 5 p.m., temperatures fell enough that the snow began to stick to cars and more surfaces. I stepped outside every few hours, just to see how the storm progressed. 

Most of the pavement was still too warm for snow to stick, but the blooming trees and bushes caught what didn’t reach the ground. In winter, the snow passed through the dormant trees, but not this late in May. 

 I felt this storm could be a replay. How often did that happen, a storm just like one years before? I tucked my car in close to the garage. The few spindly trees standing there were unlikely to break in a way that damaged the car. 

 Although the pavement largely stayed clear, the storm dumped nearly a foot on parts of Colorado Springs. I counted about five inches on various surfaces, but the bigger concern was the wet, heavy snow bending trees to unhealthy angles. 

 I first had an inkling that the storm followed the earlier template when I heard boots on my living floor. Boots on the floor were actually limbs bending on the roof of the house and garage. I put on winter gear and headed outside into a springtime wonderland.

Everything was white and quiet. Few cars traveled the roads, as trees came down during the night. Mercifully the power stayed on this time. The crabapple along my front walk had one branch split and lean on the roof. The branch didn’t die and still grows a month later. 

In the front yard, a branch 20 feet long split from one of the tallest trees and continued to dangle precariously about 30 feet above the ground. Two weeks later, gravity’s slow work brough it down. 

 As bad as we needed the moisture, we needed downed trees less. I took to the yard with a broom and batted snow from any branch I could reach. 

I shook trunks where I could move the tree enough for the snow clumps to slide free (often onto me). An hour after I brushed them clean, the compressed bushes and small trees bounced back to their original forms. 

 The sun would not fully escape the clouds, but enough light broke through to push the temperature above freezing and start the melting. Sheets of snow slid out of the trees. 

 I looked out onto the street, where I parked three years ago and lost my driver’s side mirror. A cluster of dead branches, some 15 feet long, had fallen from the tree. Down the street, even more large branches had come down. 

 As much as I liked seeing the snow on my third anniversary in Colorado, I didn’t miss the car damage that accompanied the first one.