So we (Denver metro) had this little blizzard today. I won’t bore you with a bunch of snow pictures since they all look pretty much alike. Instead, I thought this video was attention-getting. Picture this blowing through a city for the better part of a day. No ruler stuck in a pile of snow for KUSA reporter Ryan Haarer. He and photojournalist Chris Hansen inadvertently buried their truck in a big drift out near Watkins, scarcely 10 miles east of Aurora, and spent most of the afternoon observing and reporting the storm “up close and personal” before a tow truck finally reached them.
As best I can recall, this is the most snow we’ve had at one time since I moved here in 2005. The airport closed. The interstates were closed all the way to Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming. Traction laws, usually employed only in the mountains, were activated across the metro (first time CDOT has ever done that). Lots of power outages (300,000 homes without power) because of downed trees. My power blinked off for about 10 minutes this morning, just as I got out of bed, but by the time I got to the kitchen, it had come back on. Good thing, too, because my options probably would have been to stay here and freeze or try to drive someplace else, get stuck, and freeze in the car.
The wind was out of the north, but there’s a two-foot drift on my covered front porch that came in from the south side (the porch opens to the south and east). Go figure. The covered deck on the west side of my house has at least a foot of snow drifted across it. On all sides of the house, windows are obscured either by snow clumped on the screens or frozen “rain drops” on the glass.
And my golden/lab mix, a solid 60-pound dog, resorted to jumps instead of just plowing through snow that’s chest deep on her in the drift-free areas.
This was designated a blizzard because of the wind. I learned only recently that “blizzard” denotes high winds (steady or frequently gusting to 35 mph or more, and enough falling or blowing snow to reduce visibility to 1/4 miles or less. It doesn’t matter how much snow falls. Two inches could be a blizzard. Westminster, the next town west of here (2 miles, give or take), got 18 inches. Just west of there, Broomfield got 20 inches. I don’t have a precise number for Thornton, where I live, but I’m half way between two stations reporting 17 and 19 inches, respectively.
This stuff had better melt fast because there’s another storm due in Saturday.
Mind you, it was 70° here yesterday.
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Found a list of snowfall totals for a number of cities. It says Thornton got 20 inches.
Seventy degrees one day and blizzarding the next — are you SURE you’re not in Texas?
😛
LOL. Dunno. Coulda blown there by now, but can’t confirm until I get out of the house.
Or Arkansas? Oh, wait, that’s me, and the storm hasn’t hit here just yet.
Hope your power stays on!
Me too. I honestly don’t know if I could get to a warm place if I had to leave here.
I like that you said, “The wind was out of the north”, rather than “The wind came straight out of Canada”. We have enough of a complex as it is. Glad you stopped blaming us for the cold weather!
In Colorado, most of our weather systems seem to come from the Pacific Coast, so I’m gradually breaking the habit of blaming Canada. I confess we did that a lot in Oklahoma, though.
Sitting here on a pleasant autumn afternoon temperature around 28°C (82°F I’m finding it impossible to image. 😀 And I plan to keep it that way! 😈
I find it equally impossible to imagine your weather. Not sure I’ll ever get used to your seasons being the opposite of ours.
Yeah, we’ve had some wonky weather down here, too. But not as bad as you have. I almost started planting my outdoor potted flowers last week. Now glad I didn’t. I have a few Columbines that I haven’t planted yet, but they seem to be doing okay despite we’ve hit below freezing a couple times.
lol… Just remembered the tumbleweeds… you got that wind and snow whereas we just got the wind. But it was so strong for so long that we had a major problem with tumbleweeds piling up on the highways and roads. Had to bring in road plows to push them off to the side. We had a bit of a pile in our driveway, but wasn’t too bad.
I’ve seen pictures of the tumbleweed pileups, but I’m not sure I’ve actually seen a tumbleweed. Probably have and didn’t recognize it because it wasn’t tumbling. At least our snow melts real fast, even if you don’t shovel it. Good thing, too, because we have more coming in tomorrow.
That’s what I hear. lol, when I first moved out here, I thought watching the tumbleweed, well, tumble across the road was so cool. The ol’ west, you know. Well, I also knew that novelty would probably wear off, and it has. I still smile, though, when I see them go across the road in front of me — just reminds me that I live in the southwest and not Indiana anymore. For the most part, I like it here.
I love the west and southwest. The land, the weather, the culture. Even the snow and tumbleweeds. (Well, maybe not the summer heat … ) Was not at all happy in the northeast or south.