Down and Out in Denver

When I speak to friends outside of Colorado (some of whom might be reading this post right now; this lesson in Colorado’s climate is for you!) they tend to assume that we here in the Mile High City are blanketed by snow from October to April and that temperatures are always icy.  We Denverites know that this is far from the truth.  I think Colorado’s reputation for winter sports leads people to believe that all of Colorado is at the same altitude as Aspen or Vail.  Not so, of course.  And while D-Town is a mile above sea level, significant chunks of Colorado look a lot like Kansas and Nebraska in terms of landscape and climate (this is not necessarily a good thing as anyone who has landed at DIA can verify).

The View From Blake's Window

Rather, what marks Denver’s weather as unique is its utter variability, the completely erratic relationship we have with Mother Nature.  Case in point: the past 24 hours.  On Monday it got up to 70.  It was balmy and lovely and one felt that spring had truly arrived.  Yesterday morning it was cloudy and in the 40s.  By the late afternoon it was raining.  And by 9:00 we were in the midst of a severe weather warning, thick wet snow falling at a steady clip (and I was on I-25; silly, foolish Blake). Today we are blanketed by snow, roads are clogged, a number of school districts are entirely shut down, and no doubt many appointments are being canceled.  The Colorado State Legislature and Denver’s office of the Government Accountability Office: closed.  Xcel reports that 7,500 customers are without power this morning as the heavy snow snapped tree branches, causing outages in power lines.

Last night they were predicting around a foot of total accumulation and it looks like that may have happened; some areas of Boulder and Jefferson counties saw about 20 inches of total snowfall.  It’s cloudy where I live downtown but there’s nothing actually coming down anymore.  The good news is that it’s supposed to be 49 and sunny tomorrow.  And snowing again by Saturday, alas…