March 31, 2013
22 of 65
St. Patrick’s Day 2003
They say that if you don’t like the weather in Colorado, just wait an hour and it will change. How could anyone not like our weather?
From 1993 until 2005, our family lived in the mountains Northwest of Idaho Springs. On Sunday evening, March 16, 2003, we watched the TV weather report. Dave Fraser, the weatherman on Channel 2, said a storm was approaching and the mountains could expect 3-4 feet of snow, with more in some areas. I scoffed at the forecast and remarked that the sensationalism of television journalism had even affected the weatherman. Before we went to bed that night, I checked outside and found it cloudy, but there was no precipitation. Nevertheless, we moved one of our cars to the top of the driveway in case our road became blocked.
When we awoke there was more than a foot of snow on our deck and it was still falling. I planned to go to work, so I started shoveling the driveway. Soon Cathy informed me that Interstate 70 was closed all through the county and I could not reach my office. Suzanne was on Spring Break from high school and Michael was in Fort Collins attending Colorado State University. As the snow continued, we worried about its weight on our decks and our roof, so Cathy, Suzanne and I spent several hours removing what we could. When we went back inside, there was a message on the answering machine from Michael. It said: “Hello. Is anyone home? You have to be home. The news says you can’t go anywhere.”
He was right. Our driveway was a steep ¼ mile up to Fall River Road. Interstate 70 was another 5 ½ miles down Fall River. That whole distance was buried under about 4 feet of snow and impassable. I-70 was similarly buried and closed in both directions.
We were afraid that we would soon lose our electricity. That was a concern because we needed power to operate our heating system and the electric pump which supplied water from our well. We brought in firewood and we filled all the containers we could find with water. As darkness approached, with the snow still falling, we lost both our electric and telephone services. We lit candles and made a fire in the living room’s wood burning stove. We set up a Coleman camping stove on the covered deck off the kitchen to prepare dinner. Later, we unrolled our sleeping bags and slept in front of the fire. We knew we would need to shovel more in the morning, but were confident that the storm was nearly finished.
Sunrise showed that another two feet of snow had fallen overnight, and it was still coming down. It was much too deep for our dog, Emmy, to walk through; so we shoveled a path so she could relieve herself. The snow continued to fall and we continued to shovel and to worry about the stability of our decks and roof. By sundown, we had received another two feet and there was no end in sight.
We still had no electricity or phone service. We again lit candles, cooked on the camping stove, used our bathrooms sparingly and slept on the living room floor. We awoke the next morning to find still more accumulation, but the sky seemed to be clearing. Within a few hours the snow stopped. We cleared out the area in front of the garage and strapped on snowshoes so we could check on the car we had left at the top of the driveway. When we reached the top, we couldn’t even see the car. It was completely buried in snow. We couldn’t see the road. All we could see was snow. We were much too familiar with that sight, so we went back to spend another night without heat or light or water.
By late Thursday, we had telephone service, but no electricity. By Friday, the roads had been plowed, but I still could not get to work. That would have required me to drive over part of US Highway 6 that remained closed to cars unless they carried an avalanche beacon. We snowshoed again to the top of the driveway and dug out our car. I drove down Fall River Road to get a sense of the conditions at slightly lower altitudes (we lived at 9,000 feet) and was glad to see a crew from Public Service Company working to repair fallen lines. Our power was restored on Saturday.
On Saturday, too, Michael came home from Fort Collins to assist us. Of course he had to dig out a place to park at the top of the driveway and slog his way the last quarter mile.
Our neighbor had an old pickup truck with a snowplow blade. Normally, he plowed the shared road we used for a driveway and we helped pay for the upkeep of his truck. This snow, though, was too much for him to handle. To make the driveway passable, our family and he and his wife had to start shoveling the road by his house – which was another ¼ mile beyond ours – until we had removed enough snow that the truck could pass through. We continued in that way for the entire half mile up to Fall River Road.
The weather improved – it would have to – and our concern turned from dealing with the snow to trying to prevent flooding. The snow which lay on our 5 acres contained more than a quarter million gallons of water. On the slopes above the house there were hundreds of millions of additional gallons that would wind up in Fall River as the snow melted. A few years earlier, flooding had washed out part of the driveway and we did not want that to happen again.
Luckily, it warmed slowly and the melting was rather gradual. Each day I cleared out any branches or debris that blocked the culverts under the road so the water pouring down caused only minor damage.
One thing I learned from the experience was to take Dave Fraser’s forecasts more seriously,
A family from out of state had purchased a home on the other side of Fall River Road and moved in during January of that year. In April they put up a “For Sale” sign. Maybe there is someone who doesn’t like our weather – or perhaps it didn’t change quickly enough for them.