The Denver Blizzard of 2006

HOLY MOLEY! Colorado winters here on the Front Range are pretty mellow but every 5 years or so you get a winter with a few big storms. We got two of them one week apart in late December. The weather forcast predicted snow on a Wednesday early in the morning. No big deal, right? It just started to snow at about 5:30 on December 20th when Debra was getting ready. She got dressed and went to work. I was home on a vacation day so I went back to sleep. When Clare woke me up it was already looking pretty bad and it was a full-blown blizzard. For those of you who don't know, a blizzard is characterized by a LOT of snowfall along with high winds. Anyway, I was watching the news with my parents who were visiting and the weatherman said "The storm is deteriorating by the minute" meaning it was going from bad to worse. So I immediately called Debra and told her to come home. Did she? NOOOOOOOOO. She had to wrap up a few things first. She was inside her office and wasn't watching the news so I don't think she realized just how bad it was. I didn't want to wait at home so I went right away. After almost getting stuck on my street in my parents front-wheel drive minivan, I turned around and parked it four feet from the curb. I wanted to put it closer but I couldn't SEE the curb. Once I noticed I was pretty far from my house, I couldn't move it at all. So I get in my 2-wheel drive truck and take off and then I get to the hill going up 120th. As I'm slipping and sliding across the intersection trying to get some tracktion before starting up the hill I'm thinking "if I have to stop on this I'm hosed." Luckily I made it to the top and to Debra's park-and-ride bus parking lot. I'm telling you...this stuff was coming SO FAST and I hadn't seen one snow plow. I got a call from Debra telling me she was at the bus stop waiting to come home and there was a HUGE line. So I got comfortable, turning on my truck every now and then to heat it up, and waited. When she finally got there she walked up to my truck saying "HOLY CRAP!!!!" So we get in and head home VERY slowly. I get to the hill and start going down and I see about 20 cars at all different angles stranded in the lane going up and about 200 cars stopped behind them. Those people were SCREWED. They had no choice but to just walk away. We found out later that a LOT of people that take the bus like Debra never made it home that night. They had to spend the night at the recreation center in Westminster because the buses couldn't GET anywhere. The freeways going in and out of the WHOLE STATE were closed. Can you imagine that? Imagine what it would be like if the 5, the 405, the 210, the 101...were just CLOSED. SHUT DOWN. The airport was closed as well and 2500 got to spend the holidays sleeping there. Their flights didn't leave for 3 days. We spent the rest of the day watching the weather channel on TV. About 2:00am that night a plow made one run down our street and left a HUGE pile of snow in the middle of our cul de sac. By huge I mean about 12 feet high. Our neighbor across the street dug his car out and drove to Home Depot and bought a $1000.00 snow blower and came back and started helping us all out. The pictures say it better then I can. That lump there? It's my next door neighbors car. If you look close you can see his antena sticking up out of the snow.

The whole neighborhood then pitched in and we all dug out. Clare even got in on the action. She got a kick out of me doing a dive into the snow head first. She wanted to build a snowman but she didn't have any waterproof gloves. We've since picked up a pair for her so she can play in the snow without getting wet.

It snowed again on Christmas Eve for the Broncos game but it didn't last too long. We watched the game at our next door neighbors Dick and Laura's. Their son Brian and daughter Kimberly were visiting them for the holidays. They love Clare and Clare loves them. Last year at my birthday party Clare spent almost the whole party sitting on Brian's lap. He's going to be a great dad one day. Kim took this picture of her and Clare while she was playing with her by the tree.

The next day on Christmas we just lounged around the house with my parents and snacked on goodies and watched TV after opening our presents. Clare loved having Nana and Poppa around and we all can't wait for them to move to Colorado.

A week later we got hit by another storm. It wasn't quite as bad as the first but it was close and due to the fact that all of the snow from the previous weeks storm was still there, everyone was running out of places to put the snow. It was very calm with no wind though so all of the trees looked amazing as you can see here.

Of course there was a lot of shoveling to do again. Our neighbor Clark with the snow blower helped out again, but I managed to shovel half of my driveway before he got to me. A week after that we got hit by another storm and it snowed all day Friday. When I got home from work, my sidewalk and driveway was already cleared. THANKS CLARK! Everyone keeps saying "so do you still like Colorado?" Our answer is definitely yes. We LOVE Colorado and I love having four seasons. Until next time! :-)