I think I may have been a bit off...

[Timmyy]

It once was really bad but we have made huge improvements to the air quality in the last 20 years.

[davebarnes]

Originally Posted by Timmyy

I was in SLC in January and I was very surprised by the air quality. I had no idea it could get that bad there.

Car emissions + home furnace emissions + WATER VAPOR (from the lake) + mountains to the East = yellow soup

Originally Posted by Mach50

I think most people believe we can ski in/ski out of our driveways.

Not true. They think that lifts begin in the parking lot at Mile High ('cause Monday Night Football).

[bartonizer]

Originally Posted by davebarnes

Car emissions + home furnace emissions + WATER VAPOR (from the lake) + mountains to the East = yellow soup


Not true. They think that lifts begin in the parking lot at Mile High ('cause Monday Night Football).

Ha! A couple years ago I remember my wife talking to an insurance agent somewhere in the east, and he asked her if we were safe from avalanches in Downtown Denver.

[nmboltsfan]

I think the "Mile High" moniker has a lot to do with it. I grew up spending summers with family in Denver, so I always thought it was funny when people/classmates from back home in NM had the assumption of Denver being "in the mountains."

Albuquerque on the other hand which has the same elevation as Denver is comparatively much closer to being "in the mountains" since a section of our metro is actually called "the east mountains," and the city is actually nestled in a valley between 10,700ft. mountain peaks on one side and volcanic peaks and escarpments on the other, but people outside the metro and NM seem to always be surprised that our landscape is more than just the occasional passing tumbleweed.

Point being, it's all in the name and how the city is presented in media I guess. You hear Denver and Colorado in general and you think mountains. You hear ABQ and New Mexico you think desolate flat (aside from the sand dunes) desert. New Mexico and Colorado, the 5th and 8th biggest states by land area respectively, are too big to be accurately defined by the broad generalizations of "desert" or "mountain" that people try to apply to the states and their metro areas.

[Hipchik]

Originally Posted by denverian

How would anyone think that a metro area of 3 million was "in" the mountains?? Is Phoenix "in" the mountains? or L.A.? Or Seattle??? There ARE mountains here. I seem them every day from my house, during my commute, from the view at work... Some people seem to go the opposite way and act like were out by Limon where you can barely see them on a very clear day.

(couldn't rep you again)

Reminds me of when I was very young and naive and flew to Zurich for the first time. I was disappointed that it wasn't "in" the Alps and the Swiss Miss didn't hand me a hot cocoa upon arrival.