The good news is that we’ve gotten a lot less snow today than was expected – a couple of inches at most. The bad news is that the snow may continue through Sunday, jeopardizing the plan to head up into the mountains for New Year’s Eve. Given the wide range in forecasts – I’ve heard everything from 2 inches to 2 feet – I’ll probably have to hold off on a decision until the very last minute.
Right now, Denver’s not too bad – the main issue is parking. Most roads are at least passable, with the higher trafficked roads mostly slush at this point and even the residential ones navigable for one car at a time. The problem is that is that parking is a nightmare. When heading over to a friend’s house in the Highlands today, I didn’t even want to try so I walked the mile and a half over there before grabbing lunch at Mead Street. Good thing, too, because while the roads over there aren’t terrible, the sides of the street are either plowed in or sectioned off by foot and a half ruts. Parking under those conditions is somewhat problematic, as you might guess.
So much so that a handful of residents seem to have borrowed an approach I’ve only ever seen before in Southie. Certain areas of South Boston – over by Thomas Park, most notably – have such a scarcity of parking that residents take very personal ownership of street parking spaces. When I first arrived there, I couldn’t figure out why there were folding chairs, vacuum cleaners and – on one occasion – a old washing machine randomly occupying parking spaces. Yeah, I’m not the sharpest tack in the box.
But the situation here is somewhat similar; after spending an hour or so digging their cars out and creating a spot that a resident can get in and out of, folks seem reluctant to let random drivers occupy that slot while they’re absent from it. Hence the chairs in the picture. I expect to see a lot more of this in the days ahead.
Besides the roads, businesses all over are closed due to the storm. Pretty much everything on Platte St looked closed – including my grocery store. I haven’t ventured south into downtown just yet, though, so no read on what’s open or not there. I’ll be very curious to see final figures of the economic impact these storms will have on area businesses; I’d expect it to be fairly substantial.
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