Sunday morning round-up: Interesting weather we're having

This week's Sunday morning round-up looks at the weather. Summer is poised to arrive after several false starts. Cheyenne received 14 inches of heavy wet snow two Sundays ago. The morning after, I broke my car's front windshield using my snow shovel to remove the cement-like mixture so I could get to work. I lifted a shovel-full of the stuff and the shovel and snow came crashing down and shattered the glass.When I made a claim with Farmers Insurance, which spends millions on clever commercials, there was disbelief on the other end of the line.

"Snow? Where are you?"

"Wyoming."

"It's still snowing in Wyoming?"

"We've had snow in every month but July. Where are you?"

"Oklahoma City."

"You guys get all of those tornadoes."

"Yeah. Maybe snow isn't so bad."

This past week, we had tornadoes near Gillette, Wheatland and on top of Casper Mountain. Hail, too. Just down the road in Loveland, Colorado, 5.5 inches of rain fell in four hours on Friday, causing fears that the floods of September 2013 were making a repeat performance. Funnel clouds closed Denver International Airport last week. I can tell when DIA closes because its jets land in my backyard. My house is adjacent to the airport, which has a runway long enough to handle United/Southwest/Frontier airliners. On some summer afternoons, you can see a half-dozen of them huddling near our miniscule terminal, waiting for the skies to clear over Denver, just 100 miles to our south.

So Wyoming gets snow, monsoon rains, hail and tornadoes. But our twisters are not the monsters they get in Oklahoma. Picturesque, though. Take a look....

Northeast Wyoming supercell captured by University of Oklahoma storm-chasers. 

Casper Mountain tornado captured by Amanda Olson and featured on the Casper Star-Tribune web site.