The snow’s over, but the cold has just begun.
The Denver metro area could get down to as low as minus-11 degrees Wednesday night. With 5 mph winds, that’s cold enough to cause frostbite in 30 minutes.
The arctic storm that hit Denver on Tuesday night dumped 1 to 4 inches in the metro area. In Boulder, snowfall measured from 5 to 9 inches, said Kyle Fredin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Boulder office. But the snow isn’t likely to continue. “It’s dry out there, with partly cloudy skies on Thursday until Saturday.”
Thursday will be around 22 degrees during the day with temperatures dropping down into the teens at night. Friday will get warmer with a high of 49 and lows at night in the 20s. Saturday will be a balmy 50 degrees with the night cooling down to around 20 degrees. Sunday will fall back into the upper 30s with the night predicted to be around 16 to 20 degrees.
The storm caused havoc on Colorado roads and highways as icy roads triggered crashes, including a jackknifed tractor-trailer on Interstate 70 in metro Denver.
At 5:21 a.m., a semi jack-knifed on westbound I-70 near Kipling Boulevard, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Left lanes of the highway were blocked because of the crash.
Although the system didn’t drop a lot of snow, temperatures plummeted to 5 degrees. With wind chill, the air felt like minus 10 degrees, the weather service said.
Winds from the north and northeast were gusting up to 16 mph.
In the mountains, 9½ inches fell in Steamboat Springs. Keystone and A-Basin had 5 inches of snow and Vail got 7 inches, said Lisa Kriederman, another meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
