{"id":2454296,"date":"2020-02-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=320548"},"modified":"2020-02-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T07:00:00","slug":"so-much-snow-and-more-to-come-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/so-much-snow-and-more-to-come-this-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"So much snow \u2014 and more to come this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Seven-year-old Eli Minor gets a ride on a sled through the deep snow in New Castle on Friday afternoon.<\/strong>
Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The skies dumped more than a foot of snow on Glenwood Springs on Thursday and Friday, and there\u2019s another storm right behind it.<\/p>\n

The storm, driven by a persistent flow directing moisture from the northwest U.S., dumped 22 inches of snow accumulation, according to the weather observers at KMTS. More than a foot of snow fell between 7 a.m. Thursday and 7 a.m. Friday.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, it was mostly a down-valley storm. Carbondale got nearly 7 inches overnight into Friday morning. Sunlight Mountain reported 9 inches from Wednesday to Friday morning and 14 inches in the past four days. It just kept snowing on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t prepared for there to be more than 20 inches,\u201d Glenwood Springs Assistant City Manager Jenn Ooton said.<\/p>\n

Glenwood Springs City Hall initially had a delayed opening, then closed down for the day. But the plows kept running, and the city hired a number of contractors to push snow around.<\/p>\n

Usually, the city takes the snow from city streets to near the airport, but that was too far of a trip for today, so dump trucks deposited the snow into piles at the old wastewater treatment facility parking lot on Seventh Street.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely had to add some additional help to our city crews,\u201d Ooton said.<\/p>\n

Forty people were working to clear Glenwood streets, and city crews put in more than 445 hours from Wednesday morning to Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur crews were working really, really hard,\u201d Ooton said.<\/p>\n

Rifle, which got 7 inches overnight into Friday, also needed some extra equipment to help the city\u2019s four regular single-axle plow trucks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis last go-round we had a reserve truck we got out on the road as well as a loader with an auxiliary plow on it. We even have a little light duty, three-quarter-ton Ford running with a smaller plow on it trying to keep up,\u201d said Colton Secary, superintendent for operations and maintenance.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our small crew of eight or nine guys, I think we did a fairly good job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For those not having to clear the streets, a snow day is just code for \u201cpowder day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inconvenience of snow dumps aside, the storms are helpful in making up for the dry fall conditions. Still, individual snowstorms don\u2019t go too far in changing snowpack levels basin-wide.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of the whole snowpack for the entire basin, it\u2019s not going to make a huge difference. But it does help, for sure,\u201d said Matthew Aleksa, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

According to automatic SNOTEL reports, the Upper Colorado River Basin is around 114% of normal snowpack.<\/p>\n

Statewide, the snowpack as of Feb. 1 was about two-thirds of the average peak, according to a recent Natural Resources Conservation Service report.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an encouraging sign, especially since the dry fall led to predictions of a dry winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the dry early season conditions have led to forecasts lower than the snowpack may suggest, it is still encouraging to have the snowpack that we do with a few more months of accumulation left,\u201d hydrologist Karl Wetlaufer said in the report.<\/p>\n

The next two weeks look good for more snow, according to Aleksa, but after that it\u2019s unclear whether the year will track with the average snowfall, or if the state will see massive spring snows like last year.<\/p>\n

\u201c(As) the last two winters have shown, things can continue to be variable and a lot can still change,\u201d Wetlaufer wrote.<\/p>\n

John Stroud and Kyle Mills also contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

tphippen@postindependent.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seven-year-old Eli Minor gets a ride on a sled through the deep snow in New Castle on Friday afternoon.Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent The skies dumped more than a foot of snow on Glenwood Springs on Thursday and Friday, and there\u2019s another storm right behind it. The storm, driven by a persistent flow directing moisture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 16:48:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}