March 24, 2010 - Early morning look as the snowstorm comes to an end.
Colorado was slammed with an early spring snowstorm on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 that left the Mile High City buried in a blanket of white. Widespread poweroutages were reported, the evening commute was a mess and residents worked to dig themselves out from the heavy, wet snow.
Across the nation there are thousands of Personal Weather Stations (PWS) that are owned and operated by weather enthusiasts. These stations provide valuable services to their communities and their data is oftentimes used by local news media and even the National Weather Service.
ThorntonWeather.com is proud to be one of these stations providing local weather to residents of the City of Thornton. Our site has become extremely popular as we are the most comprehensive source for Thornton weather.
Our webcams followed the storm as it arrived in Thornton on Tuesday and below is a time lapse video from the east camera. The day starts out relatively nice with temperatures in the 40’s but by late afternoon, the video shows conditions deteriorating rapidly.
This image from the ThorntonWeather.com webcam was captured at the height of the storm.
A two-day storm that saw areas around Denver measuring snow in terms of feet has moved out of the area and onto the plains. The lingering effects of the storm will be felt Friday in terms of slick roads in Denver and blizzard conditions to the east.
The early winter storm, while not entirely unusual, was the first major snow storm of the season and put Coloradoans to the test. Mercifully, the snow never fell at a particularly heavy rate and while it lingered for a long time, it allowed road crews and residents time to stay on top of the snowfall. Most schoolchildren were pleased to have received at least one snow day from the storm and many were the recipients of two unplanned days off.
At Denver International Airport, initial success at holding the storm’s effects at bay on Wednesday began to whither under the white onslaught on Thursday as winds picked up and the storm shifted east. Hundreds of flights were canceled from the airport’s major carriers including United Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines.
At the height of the storm’s effects, the airport was reduced to two operating runways from the usual six and delays of up to four hours were occurring. All airlines anticipate being able to operate a normal flight schedule today.
How much snow did the Denver area receive? Here are some of the snowfall totals:
Aurora: 16 inches
Boulder: 18.8 inches
Broomfield: 20 inches
Centennial: 17 inches
Coal Creek Canyon: 46 inches
Denver International Airport: 12 inches (as of 6:00am Thursday)
Evergreen: 30 inches
Highlands Ranch: 24.5 inches
Littleton: 28.5 inches
Longmont: 12.4 inches
Parker: 14.5 inches
Thornton: 14.1 inches Click here for a complete listing of storm reports.
The storm did push Denver into the record books and the ‘top 10 snowiest Octobers’ list. The National Weather Service will publish the official snow total from DIA for yesterday but even without the snow from yesterday, October 2009 makes the list. As of 6:00am on Thursday, DIA had recorded 14.5 inches for the month (12 inches from this storm). That makes it number 7 on the top 10 list for snowiest Octobers on record since 1882. Once today’s measurement is released, it is possible it will climb further.
From the evening of October 27, 2009 through October 29, 2009, the Denver metro area was struck by a major, early winter snowstorm. The mountains and foothills to the immediate west of Denver were measuring the snowfall in feet while in the city more than a foot of snow fell in less than 72 hours. Here in Thornton we recorded 14.1 inches of snow during the event.
This time lapse video below was captured by our east facing webcam. It begins early Tuesday morning (October 27th) and runs through midnight on Thursday, October 29th. As it starts, you can see the first day started out nice enough but by evening the wind was blowing and rain was falling. That soon changed to snow and the snowstorm was in full force for two days.
The March Blizzard of 2009 is winding down and it gives us a chance to look at all that happened in the last 36 hours or so. One of the neat things to look at is the 24 hour time lapse video from yesterday. Check out the video from our two webcams:
East Webcam Time Lapse – 3/26/09
West Webcam Time Lapse – 3/26/09
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