While I was growing up in Colorado, there was this idea that Colorado, even in the heart of summer, was always covered in snow. Logic would tell you otherwise, but still when I talked to people from other parts of the United States, they would always ask if I got sick of the snow. I blame Monday Night Football for this perception. It was the only time that the United States collectively turned their attention to this state which at the time had people leaving it in droves because of the economic collapse of the oil market. But for some reason, every time the Broncos played on Monday night, there would be a blizzard. It didn’t matter if this happened in December or September, the game would be a slick and slippery fumble fest. Though these games were fun to watch, they forever cemented in the mind of the public that Coloradoans lived in an icy landscape. And I know for those of you who still believe this to be true that I shouldn’t tell you this because you will instantly want to move to the state and make a place that is becoming slowly overcrowded even more crowded, but this perception is false.
Yes, Colorado gets snow, and at time there are some huge dumps that bring the city to a halt. Yes, the temperature does drop sometimes to frigid levels that threaten frostbite for anybody who ventures outside unprepared. But the reality of the situation is that these moments are not as consistent as Monday Night Football would have the rest of the nation think came about. And yes, the mountain do get a considerable amount more snow than the plains or the front range gets, but keep in mind that Denver is on the front range which is on the fringe of the plains, and it does not get the amount of snow that the ski resorts and the mighty peaks of the Rocky Mountains get. Weather wise, Denver is actually a really great place to live.
There is a saying in Denver, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change.” Now this might seem like a little bit of an exaggeration, but not as big of one as you would think. There can be fluctuations of temperature on any given day that goes all the way down to nine degrees in the morning to sixty degrees by mid-afternoon. The snow that comes one day will quickly disappear because of this sudden rise in temperature. So even though, it does dump from time to time, it does not stick around long enough to make you hate the fact that there is always snow around. There are more days of sunshine than Los Angeles. In fact, Denver averages 300 days of sunshine in any given year. Yes, sometimes those days of sun are cold, but a lot of the time, they are warm and sunny. Yesterday is a great example of this. Even though, the temperature was frigid as we rung in the New Year, and there were a couple of inches of snow on the ground, I was able to walk around outside without a hat, and my jacket completely unzipped yesterday. If I really wanted to, I could have walked around with only a light jacket on. And it is supposed to be even warmer today. It is this constant change in weather that makes Colorado always an interesting place to live in.
So if you happen to watch a football game that is being played in Denver, and you see them playing a blizzard, know that this is not always the case, and it is just Colorado’s way of fooling people into believing that it is always cold and snowy.
John Collings 