We can’t say the weather forecasters didn’t warn us, but the May 20-21 storm still came as a shock to much of Colorado as it hammered its way across the area. With start times depending on location, at least by Friday evening Rye, Colorado City, San Isabel, Beulah, Red Creek Springs, Lascar, and Hatchet Ranch area had all seen a pleasant drizzle quickly turn to snow. Lots of snow. Big heavy wet snowflakes-adding-up-fast kind of snow.
Commuters making the trip home to the Rye/Colorado City area reported leaving Pueblo in the rain on Friday evening, driving into snow at about Stem Beach which quickly progressed to near white-out conditions before the Hatchet Ranch.
The widespread snowstorm stuck around to blast Colorado most of Saturday, several records across the state, according to the National Weather Service. By 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning two inches of snow was measured in Pueblo, setting a new record for May 21st snowfall. The previous record was 0.2 inches set in 2001. Saturday also tied May 21, 2001 for the city's latest measurable snowfall on record. In Denver, the low temp of the day was 31 degrees on Saturday, tying the record low for May 21.
Thousands of homes and businesses in the area were without power Saturday as both San Isabel Electric and Black Hills Energy battled problems caused by the heavy snow as the heavy, wet snow weighed on trees, causing branches to break and fall on power lines,
Around 2,700 customers of San Isabel Electric, which covers a large area including Beulah, Colorado City, Pueblo West and Rye were without power as of 11:00 a.m. Paris Daugherty, a spokeswoman for the company reported, “Our crews have been out there since the snow started falling at around 2:00 a.m., working as quickly and safely as possible.”
“San Isabel Electric covers a huge service area and we’re a rural electric company, and many times, there aren’t roads to the area our guys have to get to, so they have to hike in or drive Sno-Cats or snowmobiles in,” Daugherty continued. “The outages began at approximately 2:00 a.m. as snow moved into the area. We expect the number of damage reports and outages to continue to increase until weather conditions improve. We will not be able to provide an estimated time of restoration until conditions improve and Lineworkers have inspected all areas to ensure all damage has been identified. Once all damage has been identified, we will be able to determine the work involved to make repairs and have a better idea of when power may be safely restored.”
Julie Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Black Hills Energy, which supplies power to the city of Pueblo and parts of Pueblo West, said, “Linesmen were out in Pueblo early this morning, as soon as we started seeing outages.”
Black Hills reported 5,688 outages in its service area as of 10:30 a.m. More than 2,600 outages were in northeast Pueblo, nearly 1,600 in the northwestern part of the service area, and 1,455 in southwest Pueblo, the power company’s website shows.
“Customers who lose power would usually be moved to another part of the system, but that was made a lot harder by the high number of outages we’re seeing,” Rodriguez said.
Numerous local events were re-routed, rescheduled, or canceled due to the heavy storm. Just to name a few, the Volunteers for Community Yard Sale was rescheduled until the weekend of June 4. The cross country Run for the Wall motorcycle trip that was scheduled to pass Colorado City and then fuel in Pueblo was re-routed to a more southerly route. In Pueblo, the sixth annual Vialpando Vicla motorcycle rally was postponed.
For such a late-season storm, Colorado posted some impressive snow totals from the wet spring storm. According to the National Weather Service as of Saturday afternoon, Rye had received 11.5”; Beulah,15”; San Isabel, 11”; Pueblo Reservoir, 6.8”; Pueblo West, 7”; Northside Pueblo, 5.5”; and Blende area of Pueblo, 3.2”.