Rain and Lightning

This week I’ve commuting by bike everyday since my wife’s van has been in the shop and she’s using my vehicle. It takes about 45 minutes to get to work and 30 minutes to get home. At our old work location, it was 24 minutes to work and 12 minutes home which was just enough to need a shower but not feel like I’d gotten a ride in. The first two thirds is on the bike path along Fountain Creek and the last third is mainly quiet street with only a few blocks of busy street.

After a very dry first 6 months of the year, we’ve been having thunderstorms nearly every day. Yesterday it rained so hard at work that you could nearly go rafting in the parking lot. Officially this month we’ve had nearly double the precipitation of the first 6 months. That’s recorded at the airport at the southwest corner of the city and the thunderstorms generally are worse to the west and north. Yesterday the official rainfall was only 0.03 inch.

Fortunately by the time I got ready to ride home the extreme lightning was over and there was only light rain. On the short section that I’m along Cottonwood Creek, there was a little water flowing on the bike path. Normally it’s just a tiny stream but yesterday it was a raging torrent.

With all the storms, at least 5 people have been injured and one killed by lightening in Colorado in the last week. During the storms during RAAM there were a couple times were I didn’t feel safe because of lightening and I took shelter in the follow van. According to the NOAA lightning safety information if you get caught out on a bike during a thunderstorm there’s really no safe place but gives a list of safer locations. If you are really caught out with nowhere to go, they have what they call the lightning desperation position.

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