Colorado Waited All Winter for Snow. It Finally Came in May.

Colorado waited all winter for big snowstorms, but few came until Tuesday, in the middle of spring, when a late-season storm dropped much-needed snow across the Rocky Mountains. Numerous alerts were in effect, including a winter storm warning for the Denver area, and the snow was expected to continue through Wednesday afternoon.

Although the storm is significant and strong for this time of year, experts said it was not likely to end a historic snow drought that led ski resorts to close early and prompted fears across the state about whether fire season would be especially intense.

But, they said, it will help a little.

“This is finally the type of storm we’ve been waiting for for six months,” said Russ Schumacher, Colorado’s state climatologist.

The snow began falling in the mountains early Tuesday and was expected to taper off Wednesday. By Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service office in Boulder recorded 10.7 inches. Denver International Airport had just shy of 5 inches. In mountains north of the city, in and around Rocky Mountain National Park totals got up to 28 inches. Schools across the region canceled or delayed Wednesday’s classes, and 50,000 homes and businesses were without power, according to Poweroutage.com.

“This storm has the potential to be the biggest storm of the year, but we won’t know until it’s over,” said Kenley Bonner, a meteorologist with the weather service office in Boulder.

Much more snow will fall in the mountains. Northwest of Denver, up to 30 inches of snow was possible on the highest peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Snow isn’t unusual in Denver in May — but this much is. The city receives 1.4 inches, on average, in May. The last time a May storm brought 10 inches of snow to Denver was in 1978, Bonner said.

Colorado’s snowpack, a critical source of water throughout the year, had been at its lowest level on record. After Wednesday, the foot or two of snow this storm is expected to drop could nudge the snowpack to its second lowest ever, Schumacher said.

Colorado’s ski resorts struggled through a warm and muddy winter, and most closed early for the season weeks ago.

But one that hadn’t yet closed — Arapahoe Basin, in Dillon — is taking advantage of the storm. Arapahoe, called A-Basin by local residents, had originally been scheduled to close Monday, but its season was extended until Sunday, said Shayna Silverman, a spokesperson for the resort.

Silverman said some slopes at Arapahoe had stayed open even as other resorts shut down for the season because of a quirk of geography. Arapahoe has a north-facing slope that doesn’t get as much sun as south-facing terrain, where the snow typically melts first, she said. It also sits at the top of the Continental Divide, and its summit goes up to 13,000 feet, and those colder conditions helped what little snow the resort had stick around, she said. And snow making and snow farming by its operations team have helped maintain the slopes, she said.

On Tuesday, two of nine chair lifts were open, and a little more than 7% of the trails were open, a majority of them more advanced terrain.

“The fact that we get to keep that going is just so awesome,” Silverman said.

Once a resort has shut down for the season, reopening is a logistical challenge. Many begin to shift to their summer operations, and employees often follow the seasonal work.

That’s the story at Snowmass in Aspen, where ski patrol members left soon after the resort closed its winter operations April 17.

Geoff Buchheister, the CEO of the Aspen Skiing Co., said workers were already busy with trail maintenance for the summer season.

“Much of this work simply cannot be paused and restarted without significant impact to our summer opening timeline,” Buchheister said.

Loveland Ski Area typically remains open through the first week of May but shuttered for the season April 26, said Loryn Roberson, a spokesperson. Workers who are employed in Loveland’s equipment rental shop, lift ticket offices or restaurants through winter take summer jobs with the U.S. Forest Service or head to Alaska for work, she said.

Had the storm happened closer to its closing weekend, she said, maybe the resort could have stayed open longer. But it has been closed for too long at this point, she said.

“Once we close down, we’re closed for good,” Roberson said.

The winter weather will be short-lived. Warmer weather was expected next week, and along with increasingly longer daylight hours, that will start the snowpack melting again.

As of late last week, nearly 60% of Colorado was in an “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, according to the U.S. drought monitor.

This extra snow could help prevent wildfires in the coming weeks, but it’s too soon to know how wildfire season will unfold. Spring and summer precipitation could continue to push off the worst of the season, while a heat wave could bring it on fast.

“In the best-case scenario, we get some regular precipitation and normal temperatures instead of these record-breaking temperatures that we’ve had the past few months,” Schumacher said. “And that will help mitigate the wildfire risk.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.