What Show Is Actually Happening in Bond Park This Weekend?

Not the one most people think.

The Estes Park Labor Day Arts & Crafts Show runs Saturday September 5 through Monday September 7 in Bond Park, organized by the Estes Valley Sunrise Rotary Club. Free admission, over 90 artists from as far as 17 states, live music both days, and proceeds going to local scholarships and nonprofit grants.

The Fine Arts Guild of the Rockies runs its own show too, also in Bond Park, also outdoors, also full of tents. But theirs is September 19 and 20, the second weekend after Labor Day, same as it's been for about fifty years.

Moe said that's not possible, he's called it the Fine Arts Guild show his whole life.

I told him that's fair, because I called it that too until Tuesday. Two different nonprofits, two different weekends, one very similar tent setup. Somewhere along the way the name got borrowed and never returned.

Why Does Everyone Believe It Always Rains on This Weekend?

Because it usually does, just not for the reason anybody thinks.

This isn't a curse on one show or one guild. It's timing. Labor Day weekend sits squarely inside Colorado's monsoon season, and any outdoor event running from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon during that stretch is playing the odds against exactly the hours when the sky tends to build.

Moe wanted to know what a Colorado monsoon even is, since he'd only ever heard the word on the news talking about India.

Different animal entirely. Ours doesn't mean weeks of steady rain. It means a shift in which direction the wind is hauling moisture from.

What Is the North American Monsoon, and Where Does the Moisture Come From?

A change in wind direction, not a change in season length.

Every summer, strong heating over the desert Southwest builds a dome of high pressure that shifts the prevailing winds. Instead of staying dry, they start pulling moisture north out of the eastern Pacific and the Gulf of California, sometimes the Gulf of Mexico too. That moisture rides up into Colorado's mountains and Front Range, and it doesn't fall as steady rain. It builds through the morning, stacks into thunderheads by early afternoon, and lets go sometime between 1 and 7 p.m.

Moe asked if that meant the mornings were safe.

Almost always. Sunny start, building clouds, storm chances by mid-afternoon. It's close to the most reliable pattern Colorado weather has, and it runs roughly July through September, which happens to be the exact same stretch when nearly every outdoor festival in this town is scheduled.

Why Does This Particular Weekend Get Blamed So Often?

Bad luck of the calendar, not bad luck of the guild.

The monsoon doesn't hit every single day, and it doesn't hit every single spot on a given day either. Climatologists describe it in bursts and breaks, active stretches followed by a few quiet days before the pattern fires up again, and even during an active burst, individual storms are scattered rather than blanket coverage. But Labor Day weekend lands late enough in the season that the odds of a stray storm building right over Bond Park are stacked against anybody with a tent up past noon.

Moe said that still doesn't explain why it's always the art show and never, say, the Farmers Market.

Wrong. The Farmers Market runs Thursday mornings, wraps by one, mostly before the afternoon buildup gets going. The art show runs Saturday and Sunday until five. Same sky. Different amount of time standing under it.

So Is It Actually Going to Rain This Year?

Real odds, no guarantees.

The current forecast has all three show days sitting around a 55 percent chance of an afternoon storm, described as scattered rather than a sure thing. Saturday calls for an afternoon thunderstorm, Sunday a thundershower in spots, and Labor Day itself a stray afternoon storm. That's the monsoon signature exactly. Real odds of getting wet, but only if the storm happens to build directly over Bond Park instead of drifting through two miles up the valley.

Moe said that sounded like a coin flip with extra steps.

Told him that was about right. Nobody rigged this. The sky doesn't know who's got a booth. It just knows what month it is, and this month it plays the odds instead of making promises.