Arvada mailman Tim Orrino broke out the shorts and sunscreen for his route during the first couple of weeks in February. For the past two weeks, he shivered in thermal underwear and a cap.
Orrino has trekked through 20 Arvada winters, delivering mail to as many as 1,000 people per day, no matter how long it takes.
He said the past couple of weeks have been the craziest snow he has worked through in years.
Overnight snow Thursday in Denver recorded at Denver International Airport, breaking a 103-year-old mark.
The snow has been a plus for farmers and auto-body shops but miserable for many residents perpetually shoveling their sidewalks and sliding off the roads. But Orrino is taking it in stride.
“I can’t say it’s been the worst in my career,” Orrino said. “It’s actually been a really nice winter. This just all happened at once.”
He and his co-workers have it mostly figured out now. They tell one another to walk like a duck across icy sidewalks.
“You can’t walk a normal stride,” he said.
They bundle up, prepare their vehicles’ wheels with what Orrino calls “tire socks” to help with traction, gladly accept help when their vehicles get stuck and hope people shovel around their mailbox.
“You just have to plan your entire day differently when it snows like it has,” he said. “You take everything more cautiously.”
Perfect storm
Kari Bowen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder, said the wacky weather has certainly made for a busy month.
A high-pressure system helped to heat up temperatures at the start of the month, and then the pattern shifted, she said. Cold temperatures came down from Canada, meeting up with winds from the east and moisture.
“You just had a lot of things come together that helped bring all the snow,” Bowen said.
It was a perfect storm.
Saturday — the last day of the month — could see more snow, about a half-inch by sunset and another 1½ inches overnight, meteorologists said.
Historically, Bowen said, March is the snowiest month of the year, averaging 10.7 inches — about half of what Denver has seen in February.
It’s too soon to say whether March will be above or below that average, Bowen said.
“Just because we’ve had an active February, that doesn’t really mean March is going to be dry or particularly snowy,” she said.
Send out the plows
Denver has deployed its big plows on nine snow events from January through February, compared with seven deployments during the same period last year, said Denver Public Works spokeswoman Heather Burke.
Denver plows have traveled more than 82,000 miles and dumped more than 6,000 tons of de-icing materials, Burke said.
While big plows have been working 12-hour shifts, Burke said small plows that clear residential streets can be deployed only if at least a foot of snow and freezing temperatures are predicted.
Residential plows were sent out last weekend for the first time in two years, Burke said.
“What we are seeing on Denver residential streets with this current storm are very snowpacked conditions,” she said.
Sidewalk shoveling
Denver has received 450 complaints about snow and ice on sidewalks during the past two weeks, said Andrea Burns, spokeswoman for city Community Planning and Development.
“We give residents 24 hours, generally, to clear snows from sidewalks, but when you have back-to-back snow days like this, it doesn’t really work,” Burns said. “In terms of enforcement, we’ve been sort of unable to be as responsive to residents’ complaints.”
She said she didn’t know how many citations the city has issued.
Good for business
Joe Bergman, office manager at Perry and Terry Auto Body in Denver, credits the weather for a spike in business.
“You’re just seeing a lot more collisions, and the weather is having a pretty significant impact,” he said. “This month has been worse than the norm.”
He said the shop is booked up for the next three to six weeks depending on vehicle damage.
“That’s pretty common of most shops in the Denver metro area right now,” he said.
Farmers, too, are welcoming the snow.
“The snow has helped insulate the wheat,” said Jerry Cooksey, a wheat farmer and rancher in southeast Weld County.
Good for bears
While some Denverites whine about the cold, a couple of the city’s four-legged friends are having a blast.
International Polar Bear Day fell on a fitting, frigid Friday as Denver Zoo visitors and polar bears Lee and Cranbeary celebrated.
With temperatures hovering in the teens, a handful of visitors watched the bears curiously nose around special ice sculptures. Also, visitors learned from staffers about the dangers that polar bears face.
The bears rolled in the snow, knocked a sculpture over and licked the ice.
“Even if the humans have a hard time with snow and freezing temperatures, Lee and Cranbeary find it just fine,” said zoo spokesman Sean Anderson.
