Living life in Colorado:

Snow can really impact DHS student’s lives

Throughout the whole week, the temperature was low making it cold outside, which is why the majority of DHS students had been dressing warm when they showed up to school. The snow from October 25 and October 26 had stayed the next couple of days as can be shown through this picture that was taken on October 28.

Nylene Gutierrez, Web Editor
October 30, 2020

Part of the everyday life of living in Colorado is to expect the unexpected when it comes to weather. This was definitely the case on October 25 when it had started snowing in Grand Junction, Colorado and Delta, Colorado. The snow caused many problems that most likely wouldn’t even have happened if we just continued to have the fall weather we had been having the week or even the day before.

Many people who were driving on the highway from Grand Junction to Delta or vice versa had a difficult time getting to their destination due to the snow making it hard to see the road right in front of them and the roads being slick. 

Payten Hodgin was staying at her dad’s in Grand Junction over the weekend, so on Sunday when she was driving back to Delta, she had experienced this first hand. According to Hodgin, all the cars were going about 25 miles per hour while she was going 20. “I was going up one of the hills and right before the county line, my car spun out and I slammed into a pile of snow,” Hodgin said. 

She was offered help by some strangers who tried getting her car out by pushing it and even reversing it, but nothing worked. These strangers asked her if she wanted a ride back to Delta, and she had no way there so she took their offer and was very thankful. It took them two and a half hours to make it to Delta due to how bad the roads were, but along the way, she found out that these strangers helped her out because if their son was in her kind of situation, they would want someone to help him the same way they did to her.

The next day after school, Hodgin and her grandpa went back to get her car, and they managed to get it unstuck by using a shovel to dig out the snow. 

The highway ended up getting closed later on Sunday and wouldn’t be open until Monday morning because of how bad the weather was. This caused many people who lived in Delta or needed to go to Delta stuck in Grand Junction for the night. 

Libni Mendoza-Leon had started Sunday like every other one by going up to Grand Junction to attend church and then eat at Red Robin’s with her church friends. As she headed back to Delta, she was stopped at White Water where an officer had informed her and her family that no one could head to Delta because of how slick the roads were.

 One of her church friends offered her and her family to stay at their house overnight since they had no place to stay. They ended up doing that to be safe. “We didn’t go home until four in the morning the next day, and it was still snowing with a very slick road,” Mendoza-Leon said.

Due to how bad the weather was, all Delta County Schools had a two hour delayed start on Monday. Many students still didn’t attend school because the roads were too slick, they couldn’t even get out of their driveways, or they couldn’t drive themselves. 

Sophomore Easton Baier who usually drives himself to school couldn’t Monday morning. “My mom dropped me off,” Baier said.