Grand Valley Turns Into a “Winter” Wonderland
10/28/09 - 12:00 PM
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People all across the Grand Valley woke up to a winter wonderland on Wednesday. Anywhere from one to three inches fell across the valley overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning. It’s not the earliest snow on record in Grand Junction, but it is the earliest snowfall since 1995, according to Bryon Lawrence of the National Weather Service.

While snows covered lawns and cars, and turned the cliffs of Mt. Garfield into a wall of white, the snow was more of a headache for some in the area. The heavy, wet nature of the snow caused tree limbs to snap, falling on power lines across the region. Grand Valley Power says about 1,400 of their customers lost power due to the downed lines. The outages occurred mostly in Orchard Mesa, but also in Whitewater, northern parts of Grand Junction, as well as in the higher country, in areas such as De Beque and Collbran.

Derek Elder of Grand Valley Power says they trim trees throughout the year trying to protect their power lines, but he says they’re pretty helpless when it comes to preventing these type of outages.

“The early fall snowstorms you can never be ready for. The big issue is the leaves have not fallen off the trees yet, and as soon as that snow starts building up on them, it’s going to weigh them down,” Elder told News Channel 5.

Grand Valley Power and Xcel Energy, which also had a few sporadic outages due to the snow, say all power has been restored to their customers.

On the flip side, the storm did not appear to affect traffic in the Grand Valley. According to the Grand Junction dispatch, they saw no increase in accidents due to the early season snow. But the storm isn’t quite over yet. And with temperatures expected to fall into the 20s Wednesday night, any moisture on the roads will freeze, creating the risk of black ice.

Meanwhile, up on the Grand Mesa, official reports have snowfall of over a foot in some locations. Workers at Powderhorn Ski Resort say they’ve received over 26 inches of snow at the top of the mountain.

Despite the early blast of winter, things will slowly return to normal heading into the weekend, as temperatures rebound to seasonable levels and the area dries out.

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