Historic snowfall blankets 5 states in U.S. west

Scattered snow keeps falling across the High Rockies in the west of the United States on Monday, as the biggest two-day snowfall in more than a century moved slowly southeast, leaving Denver, capital city of Colorado, covered in white, reported Xinhua.

HISTORIC STORM

Cheyenne, the capital in the western state of Wyoming, got slammed by the heaviest snowfall in decades as well. The city, 180 kilometers north of Denver, received 30.8 inches (78.2 centimeters) of snow by Monday morning. The snowfall buried the city's previous record of 25.2 inches (64.1 centimeters) for any two-day period, and 25.6 inches (65.1 centimeters) for any three-day period, both set in November 1979.

Denver International Airport (DIA), Denver's official weather-data site, recorded 27.1 inches (68.9 centimeters) of drifting snow on Saturday and Sunday - the second-largest two-day total on record for the city, behind only the titanic 37.4 inches (94.9 centimeters) recorded on Dec. 4 to 5 in 1913. Denver's three-day snow totals were the largest since 1946.

DIA, where some 2,300 flights were canceled beginning Saturday, was still shut down as of Monday morning, and more than 100 schools throughout the region were shuttered, including the 35,000-student University of Colorado in Boulder, 50 kilometers north of Denver, where 24.4 inches (61.9 centimeters) of snow fell.

"Definitely a historic storm," said AccuWeather meteorologist Alan Rupert, while Jim Kalina with National Weather Service (NWS) upgraded the storm to a "blizzard around noon Sunday," meaning winds at 55 kilometers per hour had joined the snowfall, "and had reduced visibility beyond a quarter mile for longer than three hours."

FIVE STATES

Across Wyoming, into the Black Hills of South Dakota, the massive front descended into the Centennial State, where Blizzard Warnings began Friday night and winds whipping to 75 kilometers per hour accompanied the snowfall most of Sunday.

The three-day blast that impacted five western states caused power outages for tens of thousands, the closure of hundreds of kilometers of major highways and dozens of accidents, with emergency personnel battling dangerous conditions to rescue stranded citizens.

The unprecedented conditions on Sunday had Colorado's state-of-the-art highway alert website, www.cotrip.org, showing "nothing but white" on dozens of live-stream video cameras on highways across the state.

Dozens of emergency road closures were enacted by both Wyoming and Colorado's Department of Transportation (DOT), where dozens of tractor-trailers were stranded, including 98 outside Cheyenne, the Associated Press reported. On Monday, Colorado's DOT posted on Twitter that roads from Denver across the Front Range into the neighboring state of Kansas were also closed.

The "Monster Storm," as named by CBS News, on Sunday slammed full force onto Colorado's Front Range region, the flat, gently sloping eastern half of the state that drops in elevation from the Mile High City into neighboring Kansas, where snow drifts up to 1.2 meters deep were seen.

More than 50 official weather data sites posted snow accumulations between 0.6 meters to 1.2 meters along the Front Range and foothills of the Rockies, the NWS reported.

To the northeast in Nebraska, state police on Twitter asked residents to stay home to avoid strong winds and blizzard conditions and "to avoid travel if at all possible," the Omaha World-Herald reported.

SOLID FORECAST

Despite of the heavy storm, no deaths or serious injuries from the storm had been reported by local officials in these five states as of Monday. It was partly contributed to the solid forecast.

The NSW first reported a potential Rocky Mountains blizzard early last week, citing weather satellites that showed a weather phenomenon coming from the Pacific Ocean that would slam into the Rockies, but not until the weekend.

Mainstream media ran with the prediction. Last week, the USA Today said, "Powerful weekend storm will bring heavy snow to Rockies and severe weather to the South," while CNN added, "Impossible travel conditions as spring storm delivers historic snow and severe storms."

"Weather satellites showed a dip in the jet stream coming from the Pacific Ocean, bringing a massive pocket of high-altitude cold air and low pressure, as well as an eddy of counterclockwise spin," The Washington Post reported Thursday, also predicting heavy snow would "hammer Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins, as well as Cheyenne Wyoming and western Nebraska."

The Post, considered one of the top media outlets in the United States, nailed the prediction. But it had help, relying on modern meteorology imagery and forecasting.

"A modern weather forecast predicting six days out is as good as a one-day forecast was in 1980," said Denver's Westword on Friday, noting that "weather forecasting has come a long way."

METEOROLOGISTS VS FOOLS

However, with the mercurial nature of weather around the Rocky Mountains, where blizzards and sunshine often combine, many nay-sayers took to Twitter on Saturday to condemn weather forecasters who said the blizzard would arrive sometime that day.

"People are such predictable fools," Mile High Brendan, a father of three daughters and lawyer, said on Twitter, questioning the public condemnation.

"Are these people new to living in a state where it snows? It can go from a nice day to ALL THE SNOW within a couple of hours here," Peter Cook said Saturday.

Then came the snow, as predicted.

"Out at the airport, where they just said we've had 24.1 inches (61.2 centimeters) of snow so far. The 4th most of all-time!" Tom Green posted on Twitter on Sunday. "Let's take a look at the line of people who are apologizing to the many skilled meteorologists here," he taunted, but the naysayers were silent.

According to a recent study titled "Advances in Weather Prediction" published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a modern five-day forecast is as accurate as a one-day forecast was in 1980.