Kind of a strange thing to say for someone living in Colorado, but when I heard about this flooding of south and southwest Colorado on Saturday, my thoughts immediately went to the disaster that hit the Texas hill country this spring. Fortunately, it hasn’t produced the loss of life of that series of floods and I don’t know just why — was it because Colorado had better warning systems, maybe the rainfall was less (generally between 2 and 5 inches of rain), because we had better water systems so it didn’t hit as hard, because we didn’t have campgrounds with vulnerable campers, or some other reason, but I am sure glad whatever the reason was, Colorado didn’t have the problems of Texas.
This flooding is expected to be made even worse by rain predicted during the early part of the week. For more on this weather system — Tropical Storm Priscilla — and the flooding that has already happened, you can read the news at:
The Durango Herald: Vallecito evacuation orders remain in place Sunday
www.pagosasun.com — many articles
The Colorado Sun: Southern Colorado towns regroup after major flooding, brace for more rain in forecast
Fox 31 Denver: www.fox21news.com/…
9News.com: 'Unprecedented' flooding prompts evacuations in southwest Colorado; Polis issues verbal disaster declaration
This tropical storm may have brought enough rain to have eased the drought that has plagued the southern and western part of the state for a few years, but any relief is likely to run into the rivers and then on down into the Colorado and down to the lower Colorado where the states downstream will consider it a “normal” flow and they’ll want to make it part of their normal amount due to them in the next allotment of water that is due to them from any new regulations.
On a brighter note, before I (hopefully) jet off to Thailand a few hours ago (yeah, that makes sense), I wanted to highlight something that is coming up next year.
America 250 - Colorado 150 Commission is Colorado's initiative to celebrate United States Semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and Colorado's Sesquicentennial. The twin commemorations will start in July 2025 and end on December 31, 2026.
The link is to the Wikipedia page, which tells a little about the celebration and the special license plates that you can get to celebrate this special time.
If you’d like to see the official website, it’s at www.historycolorado.org/… — of course it’s at History Colorado. They have some featured programs including a digital passport “to help people explore Colorado’s hidden gems, diverse businesses, and rich heritage” and a community toolkit which will have digital assets (not quite sure what that means) but it sounds like ways for businesses to market themselves.
They also talk about an events calendar and a drone show calendar, which started on September 27th of this year and will travel across the state throughout 2026 and another program which will start November 21st and run through the end of the year over the Denver sky, returning in 2026. They have a more detailed calendar so you can see when it will be in your area, including a number TBD and some “to be announced.”
Again, I’m still looking for someone to take on the Open Thread duties for October 20th and 27th since I will be away. If you are willing to do so, please either send me a Kosmail or drop a comment down below that you are willing to take it on and I will contact you about how to do it. Otherwise, my audience will get whatever you get — which will probably be just a pre-prepared line of “Have fun in my absence” kind of message.
In the meantime, I look forward to reading any comments you might have. I hope that the excess water goes down and doesn’t do too much damage in the south and west of our state. Enjoy the rest of the fall season, take lots of pretty pictures and maybe post some here. The floor is open...
