I rolled over and picked up my cell phone – 2:30 a.m. Whew! I still had several hours before I had to get up in the morning. Feeling thirsty, I get up and go to get a glass of water. I heard Bryon get up as well. Peeking out the window, he said, “Oh my gosh, it’s really snowing!” I went downstairs to turn on the porch light to better see the snow. Snow is literally raining from the sky, so thick, that I can not even see our neighbor’s house across the road. It looks like around 6 inches of snow had already accumulated on the deck, which was surprising given that it wasn’t even snowing when we went to bed around 11 p.m.
I fell back to sleep until I awoke again, but for a different reason. Sleeping in a bedroom with a vaulted ceiling, we often run a ceiling fan to keep the warmer air circulating down lower. You know the old saying, “Warm air rise, cold air sinks.” The fan helps keep that warmer air down lower where our bed is. Whir, whir – the ceiling fan produces a sort of white noise that is comforting to sleep by. The “whir, whir” has suddenly stopped. Uh oh, the power is out. Living in Nederland, where the winds can blow at hurricane force speeds of up to 80 mph, the power can go out fairly often. Because of this, I keep the Xcel Energy number for power outages in my night stand drawer, making it easy to report the outage. For similar reasons, we also keep a corded land line phone in our bedroom, so we can call it in. We are one of the rare breeds that still have a landline in our house, because we are one of the even more rarer people whose cell phones do not work where we live. My friends from Washington, DC find this preposterous – “that’s impossible” they said to me, when I said cell phones don’t work here. But in the mountainous areas of the Rocky Mountains, it is true, there are places where cell phones don’t work.
We went back to sleep until Bryon got up at his normal time to go to work. He came back from going downstairs. “You’re not going to believe this, there are already 15 inches of snow on the ground.” Unbelievably, between midnight and 6:30 a.m., 15 inches of snow had fallen, meaning snow was falling at a rate of more than 2 inches per hour. Snow falling at rates of 2-3 inches per hour is a really intense storm, and is somewhat unusual. It’s amazing to think that just yesterday, we had balmy temperatures that felt spring-like, and now within the span of six hours, the world has been transformed back to winter. Bryon called his work place down near Golden, a federal government facility, and they had closed. Hearing this, I started to think this must be a huge storm. In the two years, Bryon has worked there, not once has he ever had a “snow day.” If this storm was affecting downtown Denver and Boulder and Nederland, it must be a huge storm.
Scheduled to meet a friend in Nederland for coffee, I donned my parka and snow pants to walk up the hill to get a better signal. I didn’t have her number, only her email, and no power not only meant no electricity, but no internet. What could be worse? I finally got to a place I could text and send email, passing several neighbors out shoveling and snow blowing. Passing a couple with a tow rope tied to an SUV, I stopped by to inquire if everything was ok. “We’re stuck!” After looking at what was going on, I realized the fatal mistake made. She had tried to drive through the three foot berm of heavy snow and had high centered her car. High centering is when there is so much snow that builds up under the center of your car, that literally lifts your tires from directly sitting on the road, and you can’t get any traction.
Needing gas for the snow blower, Bryon and I set about clearing the driveway to at least get one car out, as both were buried in almost two feet of snow. When we first moved to our log cabin, neighbors affectionately referred to us as “the house with no garage.” Most of the time, I’m not bothered by that, but now it was adding to our work load during this snowy day. We handled it as a team effort, he running the snow blower with the little gas that was left, and myself shoveling the rock hard berm barricading the entrance to the driveway. Then, came removing the copious amount of snow blanketing his car, followed by more shoveling around the tires to free the car. Finally, we piled in, and voila – the mighty all-wheel drive spurred the SUV forward.
As I write, we are still without power. For most of our neighbors, this wouldn’t present a huge problem, as they have wood stoves to help heat the house. We, however, have a pellet stove, which is more efficient, but requires the use of electricity to run it. So, now as the sun sets, it is getting colder and colder in the house. No heat, and not hot shower either as our well pump runs off electric. I call Xcel Energy to get a status on our lack of power. Apparently, living in a small mountain town can have its disadvantages, one being you are the lowest priority for the utility companies. A woman perkily answers the phone, explaining to me that almost 200,000 people have lost power. “But the good news is that 100,000 have had power restored, “ she says happily. That’s nice, I think, but I’m not one of them – who cares? “How do they set the priority for it?” I ask. “It’s done by the most people who get power restored per job.” Great, that means our measly 20-30 homes in a town of 1300 are somewhere at the very bottom. “You should expect to spend the night without power. Have a nice day!” she cheerily concludes our phone call. I hate Xcel energy.
Ok, I guess it’s going to be like olden times, load up all the down comforters, get a book, and prepare to have an uncomfortable night. Maybe while I am sleeping, the power will magically come back on!
Note: At 8 pm, I ran into an Xcel repairman on the road near our house, and our lights came on shortly thereafter. I could kiss him!
