Blizzard of 2006 – Buried in Snow and loving it.

I love the snow, and Denver blizzards are so much nicer than the East Coast and Midwest blizzards of my youth. The snow is fun for the first couple of days, but it wears on you after a couple of days.

I love to look out and see a smooth white blanket over everything. It appeals to my desire for order. All the mismatching colors and hard lines created by the mismatched architecture now have a unifying theme. I curse the first person to walk through my nice snow. I know it’s just a couple of days before someone will stumble through my yard thoughtlessly leaving their stumbling footprints and breaking up the serenity.

I woke up early just to see it before anyone marked it up. I love knowing that you don’t have to do anything, because you can’t. Well, I could, but at least it’s a good excuse. I love to watch the people struggling to shovel their walks when it’s still snowing. I ask myself, “Why shovel until it stops snowing?”  I mean, you don’t have anywhere to go, do you? Do my neighbors want to be among the people who had to abandon their cars? With 22 inches of snow on the roads I’m pretty sure they don’t have the ground clearance. The snow is so pretty until you carve a few paths through it and mark it up; why not enjoy it for a moment or two?

All my neighbors have shoveled their walks three times since the blizzard started. When it’s snowing an inch an hour, it just doesn’t seem worth it to me. There were 40 mile an hour wind gusts with blowing snow and it was actually pretty cold. They all looked pretty miserable. It makes me feel smarter than the crowd. I waited until it stopped; it took about 15 minutes to shovel a path for the mailman, but he won’t be coming today. They canceled that too.

For all the people that don’t live here and don’t understand what Denver’s like: it’s a great little city, very un-intimidating. Its usually presented to the rest of the country as a cold place, but it’s not usually that cold. If the sun’s out, it’s warm. The sun makes 30 degrees seem warm, especially if you’re here from the Midwest where there is no sun from October 15th to March 1st.

There is usually very little precipitation here. So for a city that claims to be a mountain town, people really don’t react well to snow. From the look of the cars stuck on US-36 (Boulder to Denver) you would think this was the Carolinas.

The roads won’t be clear until the temperature comes up. They don’t even really try. In Downtown Denver and on the freeways, they put down magnesium chloride on the main roads, but that’s about it. Maybe in a couple of days they’ll plow the side roads and leave the traditional 2-3 inches they leave for traction. Seriously, they leave snow on the roads because they worry that if they scrape it down all the way the thin layer would become ice. Where most states go with a scrape and melt approach, Denver takes a skim, melt and evaporate approach. Sometimes they’ll drop sand at intersections. It took a while to get used to the plows driving around with the blades actually up but I’m sure it saves taxpayers money on not having to buy new plows. I shoveled my walk around noon today, scraped to the concrete. There was a little bit of snow and ice left when I stopped but it’s 3′oclock now and the walk is completely clear.

To make it worse, many of the people that live here don’t know how to drive in it. They moved here from California or Florida and are not accustomed to the snow. Others moved from the Northeast and Midwest where they scrape the snow off completely and put down salt. They only worry about ‘black ice’ that they can’t really see. “Oh, but I have four wheel drive!” Unfortunately, while four wheel drive is great for getting you going forward, it does very little for slowing you down when the roads are all ice and snow.

No, I’m in no hurry to get out with all the bad drivers in a hurry to go nowhere. Most of the roads in and out of town aren’t clear.

Since I’ve moved to Denver I’ve got to experience the number #2 and #4 most severe blizzards in Denver’s history. The great part about Denver is that it will probably melt right after Christmas.