The Great Blizzard of '09

I imagine most of you heard about the blizzard Denver had last week. Char and I survived it okay. It was a heavy, wet snow with strong winds that created large drifts.

While the sky is blue in this picture, the wind was blowing between 50 and 60 MPH making visibility difficult. If you had to venture out it was best to go in a group for safety purposes.

Here Char is standing defiantly on top one of the drifts. A little drift is not going to stop her.

Road conditions deteriorated quickly and most streets were impassable within hours. Fortunately, a lot of businesses and schools shut down early. Even so, a 30-minute drive took about two hours.

I have to admit I was happy with the way the van performed. We didn’t slip once.

Okay, now the truth. Char and I were out of town during the blizzard. We were at White Sands National Monument in Alamogordo, New Mexico. That’s where all the pictures above were taken. The sand is a brilliant white and looks so much like snow you think you should be cold. Daytime temperatures ranged from 50 to the mid 70’s. The wind did blow and with a cold front approaching it felt was rather cool. The coats stopped the wind and almost prevented you getting sand where you didn’t want it.

While Denver was having the blizzard, Char and I were walking on the sand. Char did tell me a few times that I shouldn’t look at the outside temperature gauge, laugh, and say, “So, I wonder how everyone is doing in Denver?”

I'll write about the rest of the trip in another post.