Denver Blizzard Causes Change of Plans

Denver -- Tomorrow my wife, Dee, and I were planning on taking a trip to Washington DC. We signed up for the trip in January and we were getting excited about taking the trip.

For the last couple of days, news media have be commenting on this snowstorm and blizzard that is going to hit the Colorado area. This winter has been very mild and after a while you just kind of brush off the storm possibilities.

I get up this morning and there is just a small snow covering on the grassy parts of the yard. Since it has been warm lately there was not any accumulation on the streets. I then thought we will probably luck out again and the storm will miss us like it has most of the winter this year.

My wife has plans to attend a Red Hat meeting and I have a luncheon engagement with a friend. It appears that these plans can be kept since it don't really look that bad out. In addition to that we intended to prepare and pack for our trip to Washington DC.

Around 9 a.m. the snow starts to come down. They are big fluffy flakes. The snow is pretty intense but the ground is still warm and the snow is accumulating on the grass but continues to melt off the streets. I still don't think that this storm will amount to much and all the hype will be worthless.

Then at 10:30 the organizer of the Red Hat Meeting called and said the meeting was canceled. She lives west of us near the foothills and said it was bad at her home. Around fifteen minutes later my friend called and he recommended that we cancel our luncheon engagement. He also lives west of us and said it was bad where he lived.

Around noon I look out and notice that the snow was accumulating on the sidewalks and driveway. I would prefer to shovel a couple of inches of snow instead of a foot so I decide to go out and stay ahead of the storm. I make one pass down the front sidewalk and start making a second pass since the walk is wider than the shovel. The concrete is still pretty warm under the snow and it is just wet when the snow is removed, not frozen.

Then the wind started blowing. It must have been a twenty or thirty mile per hour wind. It was cold and I looked back and the wind blew all the snow back on the sidewalk where it was shoveled. You could not even see where I had been. The snow was blowing horizontally and it would sting when it hit you face I gave up and came back into the house. I started to realize this could be a large storm.

After retreating to the warmth of the home I turn on the TV to watch the local coverage and find no reception. I am able to see the satellite dish from a window and see the dish is full of snow. This means I must venture out again to clean the dish. The wind is brutal. After cleaning the snow out of the dish we have TV reception.

As expected the local broadcast channels have wall to wall coverage. All normal programs are preempted to cover this blizzard. The stations show many cancellations. Mayor Hickenlooper of Denver just announced that all non essential personnel of the city of Denver will go home at 2 p.m.. United Airlines, Frontier, and Southwest Airlines have cancelled hundreds of flights out of DIA. Many outbound highways are closed.

The phone call finally comes. QueensLander Tours & Vacations tells us that everything is on hold until they know the intensity of this gigantic blizzard. The shuttle was scheduled to pick us up at 4:50 a.m. and our flight was to depart at 7:30 a.m. Friday morning. Now we sit and wait for more information. Will we go? If we do, when will we go?