Accumulating Snow

So when most people think of Denver in the winter, they think of a nice snowy city. On the contrary, it rarely snows in Denver, and when it does, it's in the form of these pretty, little, snowflakes that hover in the air and never seem to land on the ground. Thus, the snow never accumulates.

We recently had a snow storm (note that I'm not calling it a blizzard like the TV stations) in which the snow actually landed on the ground. This caused widespread panic amongst Coloradans across the state. When the storm started, there was a gust of wind recorded in Denver at 35 mph. Since this is the minimum required to consider a snowstorm a blizzard, the media has insisted that the entire storm was a blizzard becuase of this one stupid gust. This pesky snow has caused nearly everything to close - mail service, schools, universities (during finals week), shopping malls (only days before Christmas), and engineering offices (mine included!). Most irritating is that they decided to close one of the biggest airports in the country. The airport is to remain closed until noon tomorrow (Friday). Our flight, scheduled to depart at 12:30, has been canceled. As a result, we may not make it back to Oregon before Christmas.

On the up-side, Ashley and I put on our skis and engaged in a ski tour of South Boulder (SoBo) last night. We visited several friends and saw people stuck on the road, including about 4 busses, some of them sideways in the road.

Today I went up to Eldora with a bunch of the people Ashley works with and skied over 2' of fresh powder. It snowed for a few hours in the morning and cleared up to become a bluebird day by about 10:00 am. It was the best ski day Eldora has had for a few years, and I got to use my new K2 Anti Piste skis (really wide skis made for powder) for the first time!

I'd like to close with a picture or our Honda Accord.