By mid-morning Friday, the sun was glinting off the Capitol’s gold dome as once-snowy streets turned slushy and then simply wet. Yet hardly a creature was stirring inside the statehouse.
No laws were made Friday. Colorado lawmakers, as well as thousands of school children, enjoyed a snow day Friday.
Even though it wasn’t snowing.
Did an usually dry winter create a state full of weather wimps or what?
We could understand cutting the day short on Thursday when the snow was flying sideways, visibility was nil and weather forecasters on TV were predicting an icy Armageddon.
But to cancel Friday too, well, that seemed a bit extreme. Even some businesses and restaurants downtown stayed closed Friday — a risky venture in a down economy.
Had folks just waited until Friday morning to react, they might have remembered that in Colorado — in March — the snow melts.
Fortunately for Denver taxpayers, the city remembered. The city didn’t plow neighborhood side streets, and instead relied on “alternative energy.”
The city has relied on solar energy for its snow removal for more than a century. That’s one reason why city streets were in such dire straits after consecutive snowstorms in late 2006 — the sun never came out.
We’re guessing the white gold that fell Thursday threw many of us into a panic because we had grown accustomed to months of warm, dry winter weather.
As if we needed the reminder, it does snow in Colorado. And March and April are two of our wettest months.
Maybe next time, we won’t be such wimps.
