Snow Day

It is dumping in Colorado…DUMPING! So much snow that it has made the news up here. Seeing those reports and reading my friend’s statuses on Facebook really have me homesick. As most know I can take or leave snow in most cases but as I have mentioned here before I LOVE a huge snowstorm. Now some of you may be thinking that late October is too early for a blizzard but we are talking Colorado here. Anyone who has lived there most of their life kind of expect this type of storm this close to Halloween. We are a people who grew up planning our Halloween costumes around our snowsuits. I love the anticipation of it. You hear about it on the news a day or two ahead of the storm. The prediction of amounts are higher than usual…maybe 12”. But as the storm draws closer the amounts grow higher 16-20”. I would always find myself hoping for more. Once there was more than 10” of snow on the ground I would head to the store for supplies. The makings for hearty soups or chili, hot chocolate, and brownies. All the good stuff needed for a snow day at home. My favorite storm over the last 5 years happened in March 2004. March happens to be Colorado’s snowiest month. The storm hit on a Tuesday morning and by noon I closed the office and sent everyone home. An hour later I arrived home to a 4 foot drift in my driveway which you can see in the center of the picture below. My driveway was a little over 75 feet long and I had to shovel away all that snow before I was able to get the Xterra into the garage. Why not just plow right through it like you see in all the winter SUV commercials? I thought about it…but did not have enough space to get up enough speed to plow through 4 feet of heavy wet March snow. We got 36” of snow that day; all of which I had to shovel alone. I awoke the next morning to 24” of more snow. Back into the snow gear and back out to shovel. I missed 3 days of work and had my faithful companion Murphy by my side. The Murph loved the snow. She spent the hours I spent shoveling hopping through the snow and chasing snowballs thrown by the neighbor kids. Damn I miss that dog! So to my friends in Colorado I hope you are enjoying the snow day.