Heavy snow continued to fall across the Front Range mountains and foothills Thursday afternoon, leaving thousands of people without power and many stranded along gridlocked highways.
As of 3 p.m., about 39,000 Xcel customers were still without power, the energy company said after its technicians restored power to another 43,000 customers.
The heavy wet snow also brought one of the state’s busiest roads to a standstill as Interstate 70 remained closed to all vehicles for most of the day. The closure has since been lifted for passenger vehicles, but a closure for commercial vehicles will be in effect until noon Friday, forcing semitrucks to find alternative routes.
Forecasters expect another strong and wide band of snow moving across the I-25 corridor to dump between 5 to 10 more inches of snow through the evening and more than a foot in the foothills.
Based on conversations with the state’s plow operators and cameras focused on highways, a CDOT spokesperson estimated “a couple hundred vehicles” were stuck on I-70 Thursday morning. Most highways are snow-packed and slushy, making driving conditions challenging, the department said.
Among those stranded were 50 women who ran out of food and water after being stuck in a ski bus for 20 hours. The ski bus has since started moving.
“Our biggest challenge right now is the number of stuck semitrucks that are on the interstate. We’ve seen countless semis that were not chained up, despite the chain law. It makes it almost impossible for our crews to plow the highways,” Stacia Sellers, a spokesperson with CDOT, said.
CDOT has 100 plows deployed in the Denver metro area and another 38 along the I-70 corridor in the mountains from Morrison to the Eisenhower tunnel that are “plowing around the clock,” Sellers said.
CDOT towed semitrucks out, taking about 30 minutes per trailer, she said.
As of 4:20 p.m. Thursday the following roads were closed:
- Southbound U.S. 285, just south of C-470
- Colorado 119 in both directions from Blackhawk at milepost 1 to U.S. 6 at milepost 7
- U.S. 40 Berthoud Pass and U.S. 6 Loveland Pass
- U.S. 40/I-70 Frontage Road
Highway 119 was closed due to adverse conditions and power outages have been reported. Motorists can check CDOT’s cotrip.org for the most updated road conditions.
Roads on Rocky Mountain National Park’s east side were also closed, including Trail Ridge Road, Bear Lake Road and Wild Basin Road. Trail Ridge Road on the west side of the park remains open to the Colorado River Trailhead.
Interstate 25 between Castle Rock and northern Colorado Springs and roads in the Palmer Divide communities are “especially treacherous,” CDOT said, and had received more than 10 inches of snow by Thursday morning.
Eldora Mountain said it couldn’t open Thursday due to unsafe conditions along its access road. The ski area reported multiple snow slides since 3 a.m. Other resorts, including Loveland, Arapahoe Basin and Monarch did not open Thursday because of the road closures or heavy snow.
At Denver International Airport, more than 800 flights were canceled and more than 240 were delayed as of 3:35 p.m. Thursday, according to flight tracking site Flight Aware.
Some of the highest snow totals Thursday morning were recorded in Ward, northwest of Boulder, with 33 inches, according to NWS. In Evergreen, 22 inches were recorded; 20 in Cascade; 36 in Aspen Park; and 20 near the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
This is a developing story that will be updated.