Winter won’t officially be here for another six weeks. That didn’t stop two to five inches of snow in Denver, Colorado overnight as temperatures dropped in the mid-twenties Friday morning, the first significant fall of the year in the one-mile-high city. Traffic doesn’t work well with sudden slippery roads, Denver Police tweeted that 100 drivers got on a lot of cars bulk on 6th Avenue between Klamath Street and Federation Avenue. Worse still, the mayhem closed off the heavy trade in both directions. Weather channel called it a pile of 100 cars, but we’re not sure how many other than “a lot”. One thread on a Denver subreddit posted early Friday morning warning locals to “Avoid 6 Eastbound”, led by a photo (above) of about 50 cars we could count.
The blockage was large enough for the police to declare a “collision warning”. That’s when there aren’t enough personnel involved in handling each wrecked vehicle, so anyone who was uninjured and was able to get out safely is instructed not to call for assistance. Everything seems to have happened on the east side, with EMTS, police, rescue vehicles, and stranded motorists suddenly parked on the west side. One a commenter on a news story said Rapid Transit Denver buses are ready to provide stranded motorists with a warm place to wait while cars arrive drag or extract.
This section of 6th Avenue is an overpass, and according to the warning, reserved roads will be frozen first. One representative from AAA in Colorado said “this situation is, in many ways, inevitable” because of the black ice conditions, the two high-speed streets leading into the 6th Avenue overpass, and the people “ignoring the gradual deceleration” occurring. when traffic enters number 6 heading into the city center.
Thankfully, Denver police also tweeted that none of the motorists injured in the wreckage suffered life-threatening injuries. It wasn’t until about noon on Friday that the road cleared, and a tractor-trailer pulled a load of vehicles into the parking lot at Empower Field, where Denver Broncos play. Police later tweeted, “Last night’s storm wasn’t the worst we’ve seen but it did manage to make the roads through the metro area very slippery. Slow down. “
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