March 21, 2003 - Blizzard of 2003

Hehehehe. FINALLY, COlorado feels like Colorado again! FINALLY, we have some decent moisture! FINALLY, we get a snow day (or 4)!

Colorado has just experienced the Blizzard of 2003, and it was awesome! Sunday night, the weathermen were all jittery and excited about the coming storm. They started talking about 20 inches, and quickly changed the predictions to 1-3 feet, and then to 3, 4, or 5 feet. One station put up a list of the top snowfalls in recent Colorado history, saying that this storm may rival any of those. We were skeptical.

On Monday morning, it rained with some hail. Apparently some places had tornadoes. Then it stopped. Then it started snowing Monday night, March 17. I drove home Monday night, and it was already very bad. There wasn't a whole lot of snow stuck on the ground, but everything was very slick, and visibility was very bad. My car window kept freezing up even though I had the heat up full blast and the wipers on the whole time. So I got home and relaxed.

Tuesday morning, got up and it was still snowing heavily, but it was a beautiful snow. It clung to everything, and came down peacefully, and it wasn't too cold. It was perfect for snowballs or snowmen or whatever you wanted to do. The snow didn't look that deep, but sure enough, I got the car out of my parking space, and it wouldn't budge from there. I called in to work and headed over to Heidi's to borrow her snow shovel.

On the way, I got a better idea of how big the storm was. When the sidewalks weren't scooped, it was pretty tough trudging through the heavy snow. I was sweating by the time I got to Heidi's house, but enjoying it a lot. :) I shoveled her driveway and sidewalk, and she and the girls made brownies for me, and I was on my way back. On the way back, I helped dig out a couple of stuck cars. Chambers road, which has a slight upward slope, was apparently very very slick. Every batch of cars that went through left a couple behind, skidding helplessly. I took a few pictures of the frozen streetlights and stuff.

It wasn't too hard to dig enough out from underneath the car to get the car back in it's parking space, and then I went in and got warm. I tossed my soaked clothes in the dryer and watched the TV stations struggle between Iraq news and snowstorm news.

Later, I noticed a few new cars stuck at the intersection in front of my apartment, so I decided to go out and help. Those cars turned out not to be much work at all, but up the hill I could see some other cars stuck, so I headed up to help them. This soon turned into a major event. There were already 3 or 4 other people helping dig and push cars around. One car on the side was being towed to a side street. We pushed one car free, so the line that had formed started to move on. Quickly, though, that same car swerved to the side, and the car behind it had to swerve to the other side to avoid it. We decided to dig out a nice parking spot on the side for the first car. Now more people joined the digging crew. Turned out that 4 of us went to the same church, which I thought was a good comment about our church (and not totally unexpected as far as I'm concerned. That's exactly why I like this church, because the people are like that). In the middle of all of this, my shovel broke (Heidi's shovel), so I was relegated to pushing.

Here's some pictures of the event

Car after car got stuck at that point at the corner at the top of the hill, so one by one, we pushed and dug them out. After the line had moved out, we pushed a few out of side streets and into parking spaces, and we finally had a clear road. I went home and warmed up again and put another load of wet clothes in the dryer.

Wednesday morning was a completely different story. :) No school, no work. Barely anyone could move. Everything was buried. And it was still snowing hard. :) I walked back over to Heidi's to get the girls, and we walked back. The streets were mostly bare. Sidewalks were completely buried, so people just walked through the tire tracks in the streets. The snow was up to my knees. The news said we had 28 inches at that point. I took lots of pictures of my walk there and back. I stopped to help a truck that got stuck right in front of Heidi's house, and soon someone came to help by towing him out.... It was someone from our church. Hehehe.

After taking a break inside (and doing another load of clothes in the dryer), we went out later and hit the sledding slopes for a while. On the way, we discovered that Angel's friend Victoria was at home and sick, so we stopped by to see her on the way back. I also learned that the grocery store would be open for a few hours, so I left the girls with Victoria and walked to the grocery store to get some milk and assorted items... and then watched the war in Iraq begin.

Thursday, everything was closed again. Lots of places had already decided to be closed on Friday. It had mostly stopped snowing, although we've gotten a little more off and on since then, and the sun was out in full force. It was a lot wetter which made digging out more uncomfortable, but it was still beautiful. :) I went through several pairs of gloves to keep dry, and the girls and I spent the afternoon playing and digging out a path from my car to the car tracks in the middle of the parking lot. Here's some pictures of our adventures. We had yet to see a snowplow even go up our main street, let alone in our parking lot.

The snow pretty much stopped on Thursday, although we got some more that night. The last count I heard was around 45 inches of snow for Aurora. :) In the foothills, they reportedly got up to 90 inches of snow. That's 7 1/2 feet. Hehehe.

That night, I finally heard a snowplow tear through at about 7:15. He made one sweep through the parking lot and was on his way. Friday morning, another snowplow came and cleared out as much as he could.