It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood; wind and snow!

Snow means that we will have more terrain open at the ski areas.  It means that more people will come up here for ski trips and they will be renting condos.  It means that people may decide that they don't really want to fight the snowy roads and the traffic on Sunday night as they head home, and perhaps they will decide to buy a colorado condo and stay longer! 

Not many places love getting snow, but we do.  Our economy in the mountains of Colorado relies on it.  We have four major ski areas in Summit County; Breckenridge, Keystone, Copper Mountain and Arapaho Basin.  More than two thirds of our housing is owned by second home owners, and some of those people also rent their homes and condos on a part time basis.  The more snow we have, the better we like it. 

Many people come here for the winter, and then discover our summers.  Summer is even more incredible (and much shorter) than the winter.  Daytime temperatures are usually in the 70s.  A hot day is 80'.  We don't have air conditioning as we don't need it and opening a couple of windows is sufficient. 

I will say that last year we had too much snow.  You don't hear me saying that very often.  We didn't get snow until Thanksgiving, and once it started, it didn't stop.  That is ok until April, because we love powder days, but he ski areas close mid-April.  This year, many ski areas closed with an 80" base, but people in Denver are playing golf and are no longer interested in skiing.  If there are no paying customers, it does no good for them to stay open.   Locals all have season passes so they make no money if we ski longer. 

In May, we are ready to get out in the garden and on the hiking trails.  Last June we still had so much snow on the peaks that we couldn't do any mountain hikes until the middle of the month.  It was lucky for us that it melted slowly because we could have had flooding otherwise, but we all had a serious case of cabin fever by the time June 1st rolled around. 

Little snow came this fall, and we were all getting anxious.  With the economy the way it is, having no snow would have been the death of many local businesses.  But now it is snowing!  Copper Mountain has had 26" in the last three days and we are hopeful that last years pattern will repeat (except it can stop May 1st this year!)