In sharp contrast to last year’s Thanksgiving cold snap that froze water pipes and endangered the homeless, this year’s holiday offered short-sleeve weather for traditional touch-football games.
Temperatures shot into the 60s Thursday and promise to stay mostly warm for easy traveling through the holiday weekend, said Kyle Fredin, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Boulder.
“For the holiday week, this is about as good as it gets,” Fredin said. “It’s a pretty nice day and no mention of wind.”
It was much different last year, when a homeless woman nearly froze to death before knocking on the door of a Denver fire station as the low temperature dipped to 4 degrees. Many homeowners were dealing with frozen pipes and faulty furnaces.
But this year, the skies were sunny for much of Thanksgiving as temperatures at Denver International Airport hit 69 degrees, 21 degrees above normal and 5 degrees below the record, said Lisa Kriederman, a Weather Service meteorologist.
“It was beautiful today,” she said Thursday.
Today, high temperatures are expected to drop about 10 degrees but will head back higher again Saturday and Sunday, Fredin said.
The roads in the mountains are expected to stay dry until tonight, when a weak storm system will dust the roads briefly with snow.
Temperatures today in the mountains are expected to reach from the high 30s to the mid-40s, Fredin said.
After Friday night’s short-lived storm, the entire state should have clear weather and higher temperatures for about a week, giving holiday travelers good conditions to return home, Fredin said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, kmitchell@denverpost.com or
