Brief by Allen Best
Weather – April 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
The big wind story of Washington’s Birthday Weekend of 2007 is likely to be told well into the future. The wind that weekend shut down ski lifts from Aspen to Winter Park and on to Steamboat Springs. Winds also closed many highways, and made those that remained open extremely hazardous.
“Horrendous,” is how Ken Kowynia, a winter sports program manager for the Forest Service, who drove from Crested Butte to Steamboat Springs that day, described the highways north from Frémont Pass.
The gondola and several upper-mountain lifts at Steamboat were closed and a wind speed of 107 mph was recorded atop Mt. Werner.
Ski lifts at Winter Park were closed down just before noon that Friday, and soon after the highway across Berthoud Pass, the valley’s link to I-70 and Denver, was also closed. Berthoud Pass remained closed mostly until late Saturday afternoon, when winds had calmed and the avalanche chutes, heavily loaded with snow by the wind, had been blasted loose of potential slides.
Highway 40 between Fraser and Granby was closed due to blowing snow — even though, ironically, only a few inches of snow had fallen.
More than 200 people were sheltered overnight at schools in Fraser and Granby.
