I can call it glorious because I don’t have to go to work in it, or drive home in it. I don’t have to get kids to school in it. And with a little luck, some helpful neighbors, and a lot of sunshine, I may not even have to shovel it.
This week’s snowstorm was unusual, however. Normally the mountains get the heaviest snowfall. But for reasons I won’t try to explain, this storm locked in over Denver and dumped the bulk of its white stuff all over the metro. Notice the confident optimism in the caption above: “2-4 inches are expected.”
It hit the metro just before rush hour and created chaos for those trying to get home. My only awareness was compliments of my dog Annie. I let her out periodically during the evening and each time she came in with a solid blanket of snow. Not just some fluffy random flakes. A veritable blanket.
Meanwhile, my concern was whether I’d be able to get to my doctor’s appointment the next day. Would I even want to try?
I woke up to clear skies and what I estimated was 8-10 inches of white stuff. Later in the day our total was said to be 13+ inches. Boulder only got 7.5 inches. Estes Park got a mere 4 inches. Those are among the many-more-than-usual totals published by the Denver Post.
But then our Colorado magic kicked in. Bright sun, rush hour traffic, and a snowplow on my street (fortuitously, a designated snow route) resulted in clear, dry roads all the way to my doctor’s office in Lafayette (15 miles away) at 2 pm. The Google maps were right. Their roads went from red, orange, and yellow when I first looked to solid green by lunchtime.
I had no problem getting out of or back into my sloping unshoveled driveway (love my Subaru), or through the big ridge left by the plow. I’ve not yet checked today, but I may still have to get out and clear my front walk. A local ordinance says it must be cleared within 24 hours of the end of a storm. It usually melts off by then, but maybe not this time.
(I just peeked out the front window, and the driveway and walk, while wet, appear free of snow. Gotta love it!)
Best of all, no matter where it fell, this snow helps a lot with our ongoing drought.
Have I mentioned how much I love being retired in Colorado?
Beautiful!
I particularly like the second photo and how it looks almost like an abstract. But I’m sure those drivers were not enjoying it.
Those were the days. Deep snow every winter, lorry drivers stuck on the motorways, their diesel frozen in the tanks. Those days they just built bonfires underneath the fuel tank to thaw them out. Never heard of one blowing up though. That seems a long way to visit the doctor.
And I picked that doctor because she was the closest glaucoma specialist. I had been driving 30-45 minutes. She’s only about 20 minutes away. Things are pretty widespread here compared to what you must be used to. We tend to think more in terms of travel time rather than distance. How far to visit my sisters in Okla? 10-11 hours.
Yes the space there is hard to get your head around, from my experience here. The doctors we use here is only 100 yards away and a full hospital is about 4 miles away. Surprisingly it could easily take 20 mins to get to the hospital. There is a lot of traffic and traffic lights. The 10-11 hours travelling time would take us easily to Florida. We all thought that was a very long time, luckily we had 2 weeks holiday there before flying back.
I love the open space in the western US. I lived in the Northeast for a few years and the congestion made me crazy. We went for a drive one day and circled through three or four states! That was almost incomprehensible to me.
I hope you enjoyed Florida. I’ve been there only twice, for a few days each time, and didn’t care for it.
We went for the theme parks, which were huge and very enjoyable. My son tried to go on all the rides. My wife wanted to see Harry Potter at Universal Studios and I wanted to see as much as I could. The heat and humidity the second week was tremendous.
One of my trips was to take my son to Disney World, back in about 1972. Yes, the heat and humidity are the reasons I don’t like Florida. That and the fact that’s it’s just a giant sandbar. Nothing there appeals to me. I don’t care for beaches either. All that sand is a mess and I won’t swim in water where I can’t see what’s in there with me.
We were warned to stay away from ponds and any large bodies of water because of alligators. We visited an alligator farm and it was a real eye opener. Great when you were the right side of the fence.
I can’t imagine being face to face with one of those things. They do not have my best interests at heart!