Denver airport closed into Friday because of snow

DENVER – Stranded travelers lined up at ticket counters at snowbound Denver International Airport this morning, hoping to get out of town amid a powerful snowstorm that paralyzed Colorado's biggest cities with up to 2 feet of snow.

The news wasn't comforting: While some flight updates still said "on time," airport spokesman Steve Snyder said the runways likely wouldn't open before noon Friday.

The airport crews simply can't keep up with the falling and drifting snow, Snyder said. They plow the runways, but within 30 minutes, the tarmacs are covered again.

"It feels like I'm a refugee," said Lisa Maurer, a University of Wyoming student who was stuck at the Denver airport as she tried to make her way home to Germany. Some 4,700 people hunkered down with her overnight after all flights there were canceled — more than 1,000 of them Wednesday and Thursday morning alone.

Denver's streets were empty, and long stretches of highways in Colorado were impassable, even the mail couldn't get through. Bus and light rail service in a six-county region was suspended.

Cathy Stuart, 44, a sales representative from Dallas, spent the night on the airport's stone floor after her flight home was canceled.

"I don't feel bad, but I just want to get out of here," she said.

More than 30 inches of snow fell in the Colorado mountains, and up to 2 feet fell in the Denver metro area Wednesday and early Thursday. A snowstorm also dumped up to 18 inches on New Mexico, icing roads and closing schools, and the National Weather Service warned that another storm was taking aim at the New Mexico Friday night.

Long stretches of Interstates 70 and 25, the main east-west and north-south routes through the Mountain West, were closed. Interstate 76 was closed from Denver to Nebraska.