Scattered rain and snow fell across parts of Colorado on Thursday ahead of a bigger storm expected to sock the Rocky Mountain foothills with up to 18 inches of snow.
The worst conditions were expected Friday, with winds of up to 30 mph and significant snowfall before dawn, said Dave Metze, a National Weather Service forecaster in Pueblo.
“It’s springtime in the Rockies,” he said.
By late Thursday however, the service had canceled the winter storm warning for the Denver area as the storm stayed farther south than earlier predicted. Revised forecasts called for significantly less snow.
Officials at Denver International Airport, whose runways were closed for 45 hours during a blizzard before Christmas, didn’t take any chances and got ready early.
Contractors were brought in to help move snow, and more than 100 pieces of equipment were available for clearing the airfield. Fifty more were available for surrounding roads.
Airport officials were ready to send 120 workers out in 12-hour shifts around the clock through the storm. DIA managers huddled with staff, airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration before the first flakes fell to try to keep flights on schedule.
United Airlines, the dominant carrier at DIA, canceled 80 flights Thursday night and 40 Friday morning ahead of the storm and was rebooking passengers, spokesman Jeff Kovick said. It typically has 840 flights in and out of Denver each day, he said.
The airline also waived some change fees for travelers booked through Denver if they wanted to reroute their travel to avoid the storm.
Frontier Airlines, based in Denver, also was canceling flights, but an exact number was not immediately available.
By afternoon, forecasters were warning of a blizzard for extreme southeast Colorado. That part of the state was hit hard by the December blizzard and by a March 28 tornado that killed one person and left nearly 50 homes destroyed or so badly damaged they were uninhabitable.
A winter storm warning was issued beginning at midnight for northern and eastern Colorado.
Metze expected the storm, hovering around Nevada and Arizona earlier Thursday, to bring 5-10 inches of snow to the Colorado Springs area, 5 inches to Pueblo and around 10 inches to areas south of Pueblo by Friday night.
“It’s going to be a nasty day for traveling,” he said.
The Denver area was expected to get 6 to 12 inches of snow, National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Fredin said.
He expected the highest snowfall totals in mountains east of the Continental Divide.
The snow will bring welcome moisture to southwest Colorado, where the snowpack was down to 58 percent of average. The statewide average Thursday was 75 percent.
