So 2017 was a wet year overall here in southern Colorado but 2018 is starting to look . . . different.  Veteran journalist Allen Best, writing at Mountain Town News, notes,

At the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, billy barr (his choice of capitalization) has been keeping track of snow and temperatures since 1974. This winter has been surpassed by the lack of snow only by that of 1976-77. What is also notable about barr’s weather records for this winter is the string of highest temperatures, including the highest temperature in his data base for New Year’s Day: 37 degrees. . . .

From Pagosa Springs, Colo., comes this memory from Rod Proffitt:  “I must be getting to be an old timer. I remember the 1976-77 winter very well. I had just moved from Aspen to Cripple Creek to start a law practice, but I had promised some friends I would come back for Winterskol that year.

Believe it or not, I was able to drive over Independence Pass mid-January that year. I had a cousin living in Crested Butte that year. With no snow, the perma-frost went down below the water lines and froze up the whole town. They had a miserable winter that year.

Cripple Creek rarely had a snow cover so their wood pipes were much deeper and survived that winter, but in the Spring a mountain goat died and fell into one of the reservoirs on Pikes Peak. The whole town of Cripple Creek got sick that year. Yes, it was a memorable year….”the year of no snow” to us old timers.”

Best's Mountain Town News e-magazine is the kind of local journalism that we need more of. I'm just waiting for Foothills Town News.

With some sort of collective foresight, Colorado voters had already killed a bond issue that would have helped finance holding the 1976 Winter Olympics in Denver and in various ski resorts. And that was a Good Thing (TM).