Wind

Standing out on the Colorado Plateau, looking across miles of almost flat rocks and sand, you can really begin to appreciate the force of the wind. Stories passed down from my ancestors who pioneered this almost lifeless landscape, tell about people going crazy from the wind. Literally losing their minds from the constant blowing. Statistics don't do the wind justice. The Plateau doesn't have monopoly on the wind, of course, there are lots of places in on the plains where the wind blows just as much, but the combination of high altitude and dry air make for some really spectacular wind storms.

One day we drove up on the Plateau and got out of our car, I thought I might have gone deaf or perhaps was suffering from some sort of hallucination, there wasn't any wind. No such luck, ten minutes later it started blowing so hard, we couldn't open the car doors without bracing ourselves against the blast.

Since there are no trees to speak of, at least by normal tree standards, (there are Juniper bushes that most people call trees but they aren't usually more than about twenty feet high at most) there is nothing to stop the wind once it gets moving. In the Spring and Fall when the huge cold fronts start coming down from the Northwest, the wind really take off and blows, sometimes over 100 mph, which most places would be hurricane force, but up there is just another Spring breeze.

Even today, after living in the low desert most of my life, on a quiet evening, I can still hear the wind blowing in my ears.