Snow? Eeeeeeeek!

Thursday was an absolutely beautiful day. One of my coworkers took me out for a lunch where I had another one of those heart-attack burgers (really got to limit myself to one per week or my weight will double during this trip!) and outside it was sunny and warm with no sign whatsoever of any storm approaching. It turned out to be just the calm before the storm.

I've heard that the weather around here can change really quickly and true enough, it started snowing maybe five hours later and didn't stop until around noon the next day and after a short break it continued quite a while. After I got home on Thursday, I closed the curtains and sang kumbaya the whole evening. The next morning I was greeted by this view:

The first time I ever saw any snow in my life

Luckily my boss had told us that we could stay at home if it got ugly. At first I felt really bad but I certainly wasn't the only one playing it safe and many of my colleagues were also working from home that day.

Colorado is a state that is used to snow but this was quite a heavy storm by anyone's standards. Some facts about the storm as reported by the local CBS station:

- The amount of snowfall mostly ranged from around 10 inches (25cm) to a whopping 51 inches (130cm) Pinecliffe up in the mountains just west to the Eldorado Canyon trail where we went hiking on Sunday. The nearby Boulder city reported 18 inches (45cm) on Saturday morning. Then again Greeley which is some 50km/30miles to the north only got a couple of inches.

- The DIA (Denver International Airport) got its biggest recorded February snowfall ever and the number of cancelled flights got up to around 600 which was about one third of the total number of the scheduled flights that day.

- Most of the public schools as well as e.g. the University of Colorado at Boulder were closed

- Most shopping malls and some town centres were operating at limited capacity during the day and most, including the nearby Flatiron Crossing Mall closed up at 5 or 6pm

- One of the most important highways up here, the Interstate 70 was totally closed from the E470 (close to the Denver Airport) to all the way up to the state of Kansas.

A local snowplow

Apparently the mayor of Denver had spent a huge amount of resources (and money) trying to get the streets cleared of the snow as soon as possible. In the past some of his predecessors have got the boot for not taking enough precautions in similar situations. Also around here the property owners are forced to clear the snow from their sidewalks within 24 hours or face some hefty fines. There were quite a few snow blowers out in the streets on Friday.