• News
• Sports
• Opinion
• A&E
• Multimedia
• Features
• Obituaries
• Blogs

  Home Page » News » Snowstorms Settle In For Spell

Snowstorms settle in for spell

System from Washington here until Wednesday

by Dale Rodebaugh and Ann Butler
Herald Staff Writers The storms that have pummeled Southwest Colorado since last week have kept part-time snowplow drivers as busy as the county and state employees in their mammoth machines. Snow-shovelers aren't lacking for work, either.

Russ Gartner, with two pickups equipped with blades, a backhoe and a Bobcat, is ready for any job. He has plowed snow four winters in Durango and four years before that in Michigan.

On Monday he had jobs lined up in the Rafter J subdivision off Wildcat Canyon Road (County Road 141), at Elmore's Corner and downtown Durango.

It's not over yet, either.

A storm system over Washington state that is pushing heavy snow and cold temperatures over Southwest Colorado won't slack off until Wednesday, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Grand Junction said Monday.

"There will be steady snow for the next 24 hours," Paul Frisbie said. "You can expect 6 to 12 inches of snow in town (Durango), 10 to 15 inches in the foothills and 2 to 3 feet in the mountains. Once the front passes there will be lingering flurries."

The snow's biggest impact has been on drivers.

"There have been no major accidents," said Cpl. Todd Hutchens with the La Plata County Sheriff's Office. "Lots of vehicles have been stuck, and there have been several minor accidents."

Dan Bender, the spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, said Farmington Hill was closed from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. and had only one lane open until about 6 p.m.

"It was closed at both ends," Bender said. "Once we got the gridlock cleared, three state snowplows plowed and salted and got it open."

For the most part, all the people caught in traffic were very cooperative, Bender said, attributing it to Christmas spirit.

"A few people advised not to go up did so anyway," Bender said. "At 6:15, they were still stuck."

Some drivers found road conditions frightening.

"One woman was halfway up Farmington Hill," Bender said. "She was blocking traffic but was too afraid to drive. We towed her truck to the top of the hill where she could wait until her husband could come."

Traffic was diverted through Grandview, where a truck was blocking traffic, making things even more complicated, he said.

In Durango proper, police weren't seeing any more accidents than usual for this kind of weather, said Sgt. Ray Shupe.

"We haven't declared an accident alert yet," he said Monday evening. "We've been able to keep up with the accidents that have been reported. The plows are out there working hard, the poor guys."

Wolf Creek Pass was closed for the night by 8 p.m. Monday, and Coal Bank, Molas and Red Mountain passes all required chains or snow tires.

Durango Mountain Resort was indeed taking a shellacking, said resort communications manager Liz Witte. Snow was falling at a rate of 1 to 2 inches an hour, she said, and more than a foot had accumulated in eight hours. The resort had a base of 60 inches, Witte said.

Wolf Creek Ski Area recorded 17 inches of snow in the 24 hours ending at 2:30 p.m. Monday, said Steve Ives. Ives said the resort, which has a base of 73 inches at the summit, expects 12 to 18 inches Monday night into today.

In Durango, 5 inches of snow fell from 8 a.m. to 7:45 p.m., said Briggen Wrinkle, who reports readings to the National Weather Service. When she measured for the weather service at 8 a.m., she found only five-eighths of an inch, she said.

Durango West II, about 900 feet higher than Durango, had 3.8 inches of snow as of 3:30 p.m., said weather watcher Bill Butler. Butler recorded 1.4 inches of the total at 7 a.m.

"It's still snowing," Butler said. "We're going to be way over this amount (today)."

Pam Snyder, who lives in Hesperus, measured 2 inches of snow overnight, which produced 0.17 inches of moisture. A total of about 4 inches was on the ground at 4 p.m.

Even amateurs are getting into the act, creating a run on snow shovels, snow rakes and snow blowers to take care of the snow that has been accumulating since last week when 15 inches fell Tuesday in Durango, closing schools, offices and courts.

"After the storm last week, we sold 1,000 snow shovels and 30 snow blowers," said Ramsey Lohf in the garden center at Home Depot. "We got five blowers in Thursday, and they sold the same day."

The snow was no fun for an unidentified 25-year-old man who broke a leg when he fell 10 feet while apparently clearing the roof of a building in the 800 block of Plymouth Avenue.

Jesse Miller, who hangs drywall for a living, is shoveling snow because he was laid off last week. On Monday, he and friends were clearing roofs, parking lots and walkways of snow at Vista Mountain Apartments on Florida Road.

"This is the first year I've shoveled snow," Miller said. "I expect to go back to my regular job pretty soon."

Gartner, a lumber salesman during the rest of the year, plans to work through the winter. He likes to sign season-long contracts, which call for plowing when residential customers have accumulations of 6 inches or commercial customers get 4 inches on the ground.

Last year, all his work was contract jobs, but this year it's the opposite because in a collapsing economy people shy away from committing to long-term agreements.

"People are tight with the pennies this year," Gartner said. "They don't want to sign contracts, but they'll call when they want a little snow removed."

Bender had the last word.

"I'm going to go out on a limb, here," he said. "Even though I'm not a meteorologist, I predict we're going to have a white Christmas."

daler@durangoherald.com