Is Denver's winter "mild" the same way many describe Seattle's rainy season as mild? (Aguilar: relocating to, playground)

[Timmyy]

Originally Posted by Davros

Most recent big one was December 2006. That snow stuck around a long time because of the cold December/January weather.

March 03 was the biggest Denver snowstorm since 1913. Some foothill locations got 6-7 feet of snow in 3 days.

That was a crazy 6 or 7 weeks starting in December. We were actually on vacation in San Diego when the first storm hit and shut the airport down. We got home and luckily someone had shoveled have our driveway. We then had storms every week on Thursday or Friday for about 6 or 7 weeks or something like that. Very memorable.

[denverian]

Originally Posted by bartonizer

It's all relative. In many respects, I think the cold is overblown and exaggerated. My friends from the east all think that Denver exists in a perpetual icebox. To the previous posters acting like Denver is hiding a dirty little secret that it gets cold, I call shenanigans. Most people around the country think that the city is much colder than it actually is, and are surprised by how mild it can be and how quickly it can change. The city doesn't hide the fact that it snows, and most people understand that snow usually (but not always) happens when the temperature is below freezing. From everything I knew about Denver previously, I expected winter to involve a permanent layer of the white stuff from September to May. Then I moved to town and realized that snow slows down the city to a lesser degree than most other places that see the white stuff, and that there were more pleasant days -even days that I could sit on a patio- than I ever would have imagined.

In any case, anyone who's ever lived in CO knows that the numbers on the thermometer don't tell the whole story. Despite the insane-looking numbers, the lack of humidity combined with sunshine and elevation play a strong role in what it feels like. It may sound ridiculous to someone who has never lived at elevation, but it's actually easy to get hot when the air is calm and it's sunny and five degrees outside at, say, nine thousand feet.

Anyway, I've heard of people getting a little worn out by the weather here, but I've never heard of anyone moving to Denver that didn't know that it gets cold. And what surprises most newcomers about the weather in Denver isn't the temperature, it's the sheer variability. While it may surprise many people from southern latitudes, most people in CO like a snow day here and there, and actually appreciate the variety of conditions that we face. But you really have to live through the seasons here to understand why. The weather in CO is anything but boring, and we prefer it that way!

I find that too - that people think there's multiple feet of snow on the ground for at least 6 months. I thought the same thing before I moved here. I remember the first time I came to Denver, it was a January. I was in shock when I arrived, having expected snow to be up to the gutters on houses. Not a flake in sight lol! And people were walking around in shorts.

[randomparent]

Originally Posted by Timmyy

That was a crazy 6 or 7 weeks starting in December. We were actually on vacation in San Diego when the first storm hit and shut the airport down. We got home and luckily someone had shoveled have our driveway. We then had storms every week on Thursday or Friday for about 6 or 7 weeks or something like that. Very memorable.

Yeah, at the time, we lived in southern Douglas County, and we had no mail delivery for a few weeks. The King Soopers ran out of most everything. A neighbor somehow convinced a earthmover operator from a nearby construction site to help dig us out. By coincidence, I had checked out Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter from the library to read to my kids. Although I'd read it many times before, the conditions outside put an interesting spin on it that year.

[Pacifico]

The link the OP put up regarding the 20 coldest large cities or something to that affect was quite an eye opener for me. Denver ranked 18 coldest out of 20 large metro areas.

[xeric]

Originally Posted by bartonizer

It's all relative. In many respects, I think the cold is overblown and exaggerated. My friends from the east all think that Denver exists in a perpetual icebox. To the previous posters acting like Denver is hiding a dirty little secret that it gets cold, I call shenanigans. Most people around the country think that the city is much colder than it actually is, and are surprised by how mild it can be and how quickly it can change. The city doesn't hide the fact that it snows, and most people understand that snow usually (but not always) happens when the temperature is below freezing. From everything I knew about Denver previously, I expected winter to involve a permanent layer of the white stuff from September to May. Then I moved to town and realized that snow slows down the city to a lesser degree than most other places that see the white stuff, and that there were more pleasant days -even days that I could sit on a patio- than I ever would have imagined.

Good point. I expect that cases of people moving to Denver and not knowing that it gets cold and snows in the winter are almost non-existent. The one thing that slipped under my radar before I moved here was the potential length of the winter (as measured by snowfall and frosts that can occur much later in the spring and much earlier in the fall than in most other parts of the continental US). But that was just poor research on my part.

[dude1984]

Having spent 27 winters in the Chicago burbs and 2 in Marquette, MI (in the UP on the shore of Lake Superior), Denver winters are really mild, especially compared to Marquette where the average high is 23 F, average low is 6 F, about 130 inches of snow, and the same gloominess as the Pacific NW (NW burbs of Chicago is about 6 F warmer, has 1/4 of the snow, and a little more sunshine).

No more of those dreaded Alberta Clippers. The snow totals aren't bad in the Denver area. On average 55.7 inches over 19 days (for Lakewood where I am moving) in a season that goes typically goes from mid-October to mid-May. Obviously mother nature doesn't exactly follow averages, but at face value that isn't bad at all.

[Prodigal Native]

I was reading the Tucson forum and when I saw this I had to cross-post. Regardless of how you define "mild", Denver's winters are NOT like this:

"We come from MN where we just survived a winter that included 95 days where the high temperature was not above zero"

//www.city-data.com/forum/35299240-post7.html

[Count David]

Originally Posted by Prodigal Native

I was reading the Tucson forum and when I saw this I had to cross-post. Regardless of how you define "mild", Denver's winters are NOT like this:

"We come from MN where we just survived a winter that included 95 days where the high temperature was not above zero"

//www.city-data.com/forum/35299240-post7.html

I'm pretty certain that in much of (if not all) of Minnesota, that is also not a regular occurrence.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by dude1984

Having spent 27 winters in the Chicago burbs and 2 in Marquette, MI (in the UP on the shore of Lake Superior), Denver winters are really mild, especially compared to Marquette where the average high is 23 F, average low is 6 F, about 130 inches of snow, and the same gloominess as the Pacific NW (NW burbs of Chicago is about 6 F warmer, has 1/4 of the snow, and a little more sunshine).

No more of those dreaded Alberta Clippers. The snow totals aren't bad in the Denver area. On average 55.7 inches over 19 days (for Lakewood where I am moving) in a season that goes typically goes from mid-October to mid-May. Obviously mother nature doesn't exactly follow averages, but at face value that isn't bad at all.

That's just it! Those of us, including me, who came here from the midwest think Denver's winters are pretty mild. If you come here from Cali or FL, you may think differently.

[Timmyy]

Originally Posted by Katiana

That's just it! Those of us, including me, who came here from the midwest think Denver's winters are pretty mild. If you come here from Cali or FL, you may think differently.

I come from California and I find it mild here.