The weekend’s heavy, wet snow mixed with rain caused some problems Sunday for La Plata Electric Association in Archuleta County. About 5,500 county residents were without power at certain times throughout the day.
After several doses of spring-like weather last week, with temperatures in the high 50s, many Southwest Coloradans quickly got used to wearing short sleeves, doing a little spring cleaning around the yard, taking the dogs to the parks and maybe heading up a few trails.
Until winter blew in for the weekend.
The last few days saw a major snowstorm throughout the San Juan Mountains, and this time, Durango and surrounding areas didn’t escape its wrath.
Neither did Archuleta County.
Just before 6 a.m. Sunday morning, power outages began north of Pagosa Springs, but power was quickly restored by 8 a.m.
Just before 7 a.m., a breaker at Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc. was tripped open, indicating a fault on Tri-State’s line. When power to two major substations was terminated, it rendered more than a third of the county – 4,000 residents – without power, according to a statement issued by the La Plata County Electric Association. Crews patrolled the lines and restored power by 10 a.m.
After restoring the substations, crews focused on smaller outages. The Apache area of Pagosa Springs, with about 700 customers, was in a blackout from 7:35 a.m. until 3:18 p.m. Sunday.
Durango and La Plata County were largely unaffected.
“Not much here in La Plata County at all,” said LPEA spokeswoman Indiana Reed on Sunday morning. While there were scattered isolated outages, about 160, it was a fraction of what was seen in Archuleta County. “But all of these outages are snow-related,” she said.
In total, 5,734 customers were effected in both counties.
The moisture-loaded snow is always a culprit, but the mud didn’t help.
“It’s all this wet and heavy snow, and right now, things are happening because it’s all falling off the lines, so the lines are jumping. When we have storms like this it becomes crazy.”
Various amounts of precipitation fell across Southwest Colorado during the weekend, beginning Friday with rain in town before delivering a soggy, wet snow over the region much of Saturday. Some of the high-country totals were in feet, not inches.
“It was a very moist snow, carrying a lot of water content,” National Weather Service meteorologist Norv Larsen said from Grand Junction. He said areas such as Vallecito Reservoir received 1 inch of water for every 9 inches of snow.
The dense snowfall and fast-moving storm had effects in other parts of the San Juans as well. On Sunday, Red Mountain Pass was closed for avalanche-control work.
Skiers rejoiced. At Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort, the snow was much lighter.
“It’s more of a powder day and less of a race day,” said Tim Kroes, executive director of Adaptive Sports Association on Saturday, during the 16th Annual Dave Spencer Ski Classic held during the weekend.
The ski area reported 27 inches in the previous 72 hours, according to Sunday’s snow report, bolstering its final Locals Benefit Day of the season and adding depth to the March snowpack. Wolf Creek, 85 miles east, near the continental divide, received 47 inches – 17 of those in the last 24 hours.
Last week, Durango-area temperatures hovered just below 60.
“These transition seasons tend to be like that,” Larsen said about the diverse weather in the last week. “Our (temperature) averages go up, but that average is just a pinpoint between two extremes. Winter doesn’t want to quite give way to the summer patterns, so we end up with something in between.”
Larsen said it was typical of late winter.
“You’ll have wildly varying weather,” he said. “It’s cold one day and warm the next.”
The weather service is calling for a sunny and warmer week ahead, so we can put our shovels back on the back porch, at least for now.
“As this system pulls off into the panhandle region of the plains, in Durango you’re going to hit a warming trend. By Monday, we’re looking at lower 50s, mid 50s on Tuesday, and let’s just call it 60 on Wednesday,” he said.
bmathis@durangoherald.com
