They've been popping up everywhere.

"Met towers" they call them. Towers stacked with meteorological instruments to monitor the wind. How hard it blows, and from what direction.

Spot one of these towers, and it means someone is seriously looking at putting up commercial wind turbines on that site. They just need to know how high the strongest winds are so they know which towers to build. And which direction gets the most wind, since commercial turbines cannot yet change direction.

They're dangerous. Most are built exactly 297 feet high. Because at 300', the FAA regs come into effect and you have to paint them and install a light on top. And yet each and every one of these things has 24 guywires spanning off to the sides.

They have become so common, and such a hazard the legislature had to pass a law during last session to require all new towers have their GPS locations posted on a central website.

With the 1,000-turbine wind farm planned in our area, we passed quite a few met towers. A few of the newer ones were painted, and one even had orange buoys on the top wires.

But some were just barely visible, like this one sitting on the crest of the Continental Divide.

You can see how tall they are, compared to how low we fly.

Our helicopter surveys are even lower.

We can only imagine what flying will be like when these tiny little towers are replaced with huge turbines. Their blades sweeping up over 400' high.