iSeeChange

On this episode: Phenology, the timing of nature. We’ll talk about what’s going on right here in the North Fork and worldwide, answering some of the questions you brought us here at the station and at iseechange.org.

Temperatures across the Western Slope have been pleasant for the past month or so.  At iseechange.org, we’ve seen a few postings noticing the spring-like weather, and some concerns.

The skies have cleared up over the Western Slope lately, but a lot of snow fell on Colorado. That's good news for water supplies, but that might change, depending on how the desert storms hit in the spring. 

Harvest is done on the Western Slope.  All the cherries, peaches,  apples, and pears have been picked and sold, and now frost and snow is settled in.  Over at iseechange.org, several people were keeping track of the long growing season and the turn to winter.  

It’s been a weird year for weather in Colorado. With a winter so warm and dry that trees bloomed in January, hay farmers started having flashbacks to the drought of 2012. But by spring, rains did come to Colorado, and the wet weather has been good news - for some.

As part of a special iSeeChange collaboration with  KDNK in Carbondale, and KSJD in Cortez, Amy Hadden Marsh and KVNF's Jake Ryan started looking at how the hay markets fared this year. 

The trees are starting to turn and the mornings are getting colder.  Fall is here, and that means increased animal activity. 

Many people move out to the Western Slope to get away from city life and enjoy the sights, smells, and sounds of nature.  When those sounds disappear, though, it can be concerning.

For this episode, mushrooms festivals and mushrooms lovers.

Something’s in the air.  Ridgway resident Sue Husch noticed last week the same thing a lot of people on the Western Slope noticed: smoke.

As wildfires continue to rage in the Northwest, Colorado has had a relatively mild season.  It’s unsure, though, if it will stay that way. 

Earlier this summer, we received an observation over at iseechange.org about finches.  Ann Cabillot  had a mystery: dead purple finches found across Paonia.

This year has been a difficult one for fruit growers on the Western Slope.  As fruit picking season develops,  the realities of the weather we’ve seen are evident. 

Denise Weaver lives in Sanborn Park, near Norwood, Colorado. Weaver and her husband have lived there for 10 years.  For the first time this spring, they heard something they were a little unfamiliar with: some sort of humming coming from the pine trees.  They investigated, and described finding locusts. 

Denise asked around, and eventually a local farmer said that they were cicadas, and not to be worried at all.  Still, she had some questions. 

About 3 years ago, KVNF became the incubator station for iSeeChange, a new type of environmental reporting.  Instead of finding reports and studies about frogs, or insects, or climate change, and bringing that report to our listeners, we went backwards.  Take a listen to hear what we've reported on so far this year.

The unusually wet spring has made some mushroom foragers very happy. 

On this show,  a conversation KVNF's Jake Ryan had with Julia Kumari Drapkin, executive producer for iSeeChange.  The project started here at KVNF as a way to connect people to the bigger picture of climate change, and it’s now grown to a nation wide platform. 

Included at the end is a piece that was produced about a month ago, after a hard frost came through.  A Paonia orchardist, like a lot of farmers, was hit hard by the frost. 

Spring is in full effect, and for quite a while birds have been migrating through the area.  One listener, Marylin Stone, commented on the iSeeChange website that she noticed, for the first time this year a Bullock's oriole and a hummingbird, she wasn’t positive which species.  I brought this observation to Jeff Birek, a biologist with the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory.

A hard freeze in April damaged a wide range of fruit crops on the Western Slope of Colorado.

Spring is in full effect, and it seems to have a head start. 

With record wet and cold in the east, and record dry and hot in the west, some meteorologists are scratching their heads.

Spring has officially started, but on the Western Slope of Colorado, people have been noticing signs of warm weather for a while.  iSeeChange.org has seen a lot of postings about early arrivals in the natural world.  Andrea Lecos, for example, noticed a spring time sound in the beginning of February.

Photograph and Western Chorus Frog sound courtesy of Dr. Michael Benard.

A winter storm has hit western Colorado, with the National Weather Service saying several feet of snow are possible in some areas of the central mountains.

Another Halloween has come and gone, and this year for a very special iSeeChange report, KVNF's Ali Lightfoot spoke with trick or treaters about how the holiday has changed over the years.

Recently on the Almanac, Peter Cullen noticed he hasn't seen many bears in the mountains of New Mexico this year.

Bears are foragers, and Cullen says the lack of piñon, oak and juniper trees caused them to head down to mountain towns looking for thrown-away leftovers.

That got us thinking about our bear populations here in western Colorado.

Dallas and June Harding are regulars on the Almanac, but most of their daily weather observations you'll see there date back to the late 1980s.

That's because those entires were transcribed from the journals June started keeping in 1985, when she and Dallas moved to their current home at the Harding Ranch near the base of Coal Mountain. I recently paid the Hardings a visit to talk about how they got involved with the iSeeChange project, and how journaling has played a role in their lives and the lives of previous generations.

For this week's iSeeChange report, we looked into the recent flurry of rain and some snow, and what, if anything, it might tell us about the coming winter.

In the wake of the historic Front Range Floods, many climate experts and researchers admit that while they’ve known of the potential for dangerous flooding in the Boulder area for some time now, hardly anybody could’ve predicted such a large-scale disaster.

We decided to look into what the floods might tell us about the future of massive storms, and whether the events of last week might change our definitions of "rare" weather events.

In late July, a massive dust storm in the Saharan Desert of Africa moved across the Atlantic, making for an interesting start to the hurricane season, or you could say a boring one.

Last week the Almanac saw a lot of talk about mushrooms – Steve Smith said they seem to be popping up in larger numbers than usual – Marilyn Stone wondered what factors affect mushroom numbers – and Amber Kleinman asked whether it’s possible to grow puffballs in a yard.