Anyone who has traveled I-70 between Missouri and Denver knows that it is not the most interesting trip in this magnificent country. While the rolling farmlands of Missouri, the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas and the Palmer divide region of eastern Colorado provide some scenic relief, most of the route crosses relatively flat landscape. The weather, on the other hand, is another story.
Leaving Columbia yesterday morning, the sky was clear and bright, the thermometer sat at 42 degrees F and a gentle east breeze made it feel like October. Heavy dew covered the ground and, just west of Columbia, a dense fog shrouded the Missouri River floodplain, pierced by squadrons of cliff swallows that fed near the bridge. Further west, in eastern Kansas, the temperature was in the low sixties, cattle grazed on the green carpet of the Flint Hills and a pair of scissor-tailed flycatchers lounged on a wire fence, soaking in this mid spring day. Sixty miles further, in central Kansas, a stiff south breeze developed, whirling the giant turbines of the wind farm north of Ellsworth, and pushing the thermometer into the seventies.
By the time I reached the High Plains of the Kansas-Colorado border, the wind had shifted to the southwest and the temperature had soared into the upper 80s; needless to say, it felt like a mid summer day when I stopped for gas in Burlington. Yet, dark clouds to the northwest warned of another change down the road and, as I crossed the Palmer Divide north of Limon, northeast winds were producing a thick cloud layer along the Front Range. This upslope flow dropped the temperature into the forties by late evening and produced a mix of rain and snow overnight. Nothing like the experience of four seasons in one day!
