For the winter blizzard that wasn’t quite yet a storm, Saturday morning turned into an errand and play day for many in the Denver area.
“I didn’t really buy it,” said Pam Maass, about the 16-inch snow forecast as she loaded her car with groceries from King Soopers Fresh Fare in Englewood. “It kept changing all week. I guess (the impact) was mostly in deciding our ski patterns.”
Maass, who stopped for groceries out of necessity and not storm prep, had postponed skiing that morning.
“We woke up this morning and said, ‘Oh, (traffic) is going to be so bad,’ ” said the Denver resident.
For some, the lack of early snow was a huge disappointment. While some parts of the Denver metro area did get up to 10 inches of snow overnight, many neighborhoods had minimal snowfall. The National Weather Service, however, still expects the white stuff to pour down through the weekend.
At least two moms and their Girl Scout daughters benefited from the Friday night snow hysteria. Their card table in the King Soopers was almost sold out of Thin Mints, Samoas and the new Rah-Rah Raisins.
Diedre Wooden, one of the mothers, said she’d heard on the news that people crowded the grocery stores Friday. But instead of stocking up on milk and eggs, they were buying junk food.
“This fits right in,” said Wooden, who had also set up a table last Monday with her daughter when it actually was snowing. “We are dedicated.”
The two girls didn’t pause for one second when asked about manning the table if it had snowed 16 inches — “Oh, yeah!” said Lizzie Jo Borchert, 10, and Elina Wooden, 9.
By noon, barely a flake had fallen in the neighborhoods of south Denver. Temperatures were still chilly — hovering around freezing — and gray clouds choked out any hint of blue sky.
At Ruby Hill Rail Yard, a decent number of snowboarders and sledders made use of the slick hill.
“We were actually upset. We expected to come up here and see a few feet,” said Ray Rippy, as he watched his daughter Bailey slide down the hill in a red-and-black inner tube.
Rippy and his family, including 2-year-old Jaxon, had been sledding for about a half-hour. Bailey, 8, hiked up and slid down the hill at least three times in 10 minutes before little Jaxon decided it was time for a snack. With more snow expected in the next 24 hours, there was no question what the Rippys would be doing on Sunday.
“Yup, we’ll be back,” Rippy said.
But Holly Boyd, who moved to Denver in April from Alabama, said there was no way she’d be outside if it had snowed 16 inches. It may take a few more years to get used to Denver’s weather.
“I didn’t have any long underwear. I’m wearing my husband’s,” she said.
She was only at Ruby Hill because of “the little-blonde-in-the-pink-jacket person,” she said of her 8-year-old daughter Kaitlynn, who was visible in the distance as a pink speck on the slopes.
“She woke up and said, ‘I want to go sledding.’ We had to go buy snow boots!”
At the base of the hill, brothers Dominic and Andrew Ramirez and their cousin Isaiah Frias said they’d been at Ruby Hill for two hours and planned to stay at least another two. “We were the first people here,” Andrew Ramirez, 10, said.
“We shoveled the driveway, then came right out,” said Dominic Ramirez, 11. “We wanted to see snow so bad. We were expecting a lot of snow.”
The disappointment didn’t last. The boys were there to play and built a sizable snowman, complete with twig arms and pine-cone facial features.
“No, it’s not too cold,” Frias said. “I’d still come out (if there was a storm).”
Tamara Chuang: 303-954-1209, tchuang@denverpost.com or
