The Great Blizzard of '03

March 18 - 22

(Double-click on any "thumb" for a full size pic)

Six feet of snow.  8-10 foot drifts.  It was great!  Well, it was after I reached that Zen point of not fighting our fate of being snowed in for the first time in the 13 years that we have lived in the mountains.   I reached this point at about 3:30 in the afternoon on the first day of the storm,  after plowing for about 14 hours and getting the Land Cruiser irretrievably stuck in Charlie & Maria's driveway.  But,  I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was in Chicago on business, due to fly back to Denver on Tuesday, March 18th, when I phoned the office on Monday, the 17th and was told that a major storm was predicted to begin later that night and dump up to 3 feet of snow on Boulder.  I immediately called United to see about changing my flight to that evening and almost had a coronary when they said that I could  and there would be no penalty (due to the impending weather.)   I arrived home at about 9pm just as it was starting to lightly flurry.  But I set my alarm for 2 AM just in case the reports were correct and we'd begin seeing some accumulation.  The key to plowing, especially with heavy, wet spring snow is to stay ahead of the game. 

At 2 AM the alarm went off and I stumbled out of bed to look outside, hoping that the dire predictions would not come to pass.  But I quickly woke up when I saw the blizzard of snow and about a 12 inch accumulation already.  Dressing quickly, I headed out and began plowing my driveway. Now, I have two access driveways to my house - one is my "private" drive and the other a common drive that also serves 4 other houses.  I decided to forgo my private and stick to trying to keep the common drive open.   I also plow some of my neighbors (as a courtesy) so I did a pass on ours, then headed down the road to Buck & Peggy's house.  I thought I saw someone standing in the entrance to my private drive, so I stopped.  It was my neighbor, Len, who also has a plow.  Seems he had gotten himself stuck in B&P's driveway and was about to walk back to his house.  It's now about 4 AM.  

So, off we go to try and pull him out.  No way was my 'Cruiser going to budge the B.A.T.Mobile (Big Ass Truck a.k.a. the Titanic) and in fact, I got stuck, too!  So we wake up Buck at 5 AM to call Charlie to bring his Cruiser over with the winch.  He manages to pull me free but it won't move Len, so at 6 AM we finally call for a tow truck and are told that they might be able to make it up around 10 AM.  No problem. I start my plow and discover that the battery is almost dead.  So I head home to charge it and grab some sleep.

I'm back on the road at around 9:30 and head back to Buck & Peggy's to see about Len.  The tow truck had just arrived and was working to pull Len free.  Another neighbor, Lueb, was also on the road with his plow.    That's my Cruiser and Lueb behind me in the picture.  Once free,  Len & I (he lives in one of the houses served by our common driveway) began plowing again.  By this time,  the snow was coming down fast and wet and we were constantly behind the curve. We each got stuck numerous times, luckily not concurrently and were able to take turns extricating each other. But, by 3:30 I got myself high-centered in Charlie & Maria's driveway and no amount of digging could get me out.  I called Len,  but he was stuck in his driveway.  Another neighbor, Bobbie, even tried with her tractor but she almost got stuck.  It was at this point where I finally stopped fighting, accepted my fate and decided to just enjoy the storm.  I called Sue to tell her the news.  Charlie & I then had a schnapps.

Luckily, we never lost electricity and had plenty of food, so Sue, I and the dogs just settled in.  It stopped snowing on Thursday and I called Ernie at Foothills Excavating to see if could could get us out.  He said he'd be up Friday afternoon and by Sunday morning he finally had all of our driveways passable.  Check out the picture gallery below for highlights of the storm.