Heavy Snow

_DSC8529.jpg, originally uploaded by kcmckell.

Originally published Thursday, March 25, 2010

No big Earth-shattering revelations today, just a brief update.

So apparently there are some storms that make Coloradans sit down and pay attention. Oddly enough, this week’s one-day, one-night affair was one of these. I flipped on CNN the morning after to hear that “Boulder, Colorado is reporting 18 inches of snow.” I just about laughed out loud (lol’d). Out my back window, there couldn’t have been more than eight inches of wet, heavy, very much ready to melt if you looked at it for too long snow.

The local news proceeded to tell me that all schools (that were not on Spring Break) in the Denver Metro Area were closed. Many urbane city services were closed, and horror of horrors, all city libraries would be closed. This was all fairly shocking to me because I had witnessed the Front Range weather three days of continuous snowfall only a month ago. Nobody ran for shelter then. What made this little storm system any different?

It turns out that while this storm was lighter than previous ones in that it was shorter and warmer, it delivered much heavier snow. This is the kind of snow I’m used to seeing in the Sierras. Big flakes that stick to your windshield and leave big streaks of water. The stuff that fell this week was not the fluffy easily swept aside snow that falls in the colder months of winter. No, this was spring snow: Sierra Cement as I know it.

This storm brought the kind of snowflake that falls on a tree and just sits there. Then a foot of his friends join him, and suddenly there’s 40 pounds on a spindly branch that just can’t take it any more. The day after the storm, I counted no fewer than 20 limbs of various diameter down around town. I came home to blinking clocks---due no doubt to some of those limbs falling on power lines.

Now I’m beginning to understand that you can’t always judge a storm by its Doppler signature.

I would like to point out that my roommate (a native Denverer, Denverite?) enjoys telling me that Californian’s don’t know how to ski on their mountains and can’t drive in their snow. I can’t help but point out that apparently, Coloradans find it difficult to drive in our snow.

Stay dry,
Clay