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Suburban residents battle noise, lead pollution from busy metro Denver airports

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

Charlene Willey checked her smartwatch as a sudden rumble enveloped her Westminster home less than half a mile from the runway’s end at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport.“That was 70 decibels inside with the doors shut,” she said, sitting at her kitchen table as the sound — nearly the equivalent of that made by a vacuum cleaner — faded as fast as it came. “That was a piston engine.”Over the next 90 minutes, no fewer than seven airplanes roared over her roof in the Green Knolls neighborhood just east of Wadsworth Boulevard, either on approach to or takeoff from the airport.“I swear I could spit on them, they’re so low,” said the 72-year-old retired financial services planner, who has lived in the shadow of the airport for three decades but said the noise only became irritating — and then unbearable — in the last few years.Thirty miles away, Nathan Winger can’t find peace either. With an average of 360 dai...

Highlands Ranch tornado tore out 16,000 trees but helped build a sense of community

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

“Were you home when the tornado hit? Did you have damage?”Those are the first questions people in Highlands Ranch are asking each other when meeting up nowadays, a few weeks after the wildest weather event anyone can remember experiencing in the suburb south of Denver.The next discussion is likely about how to replace what has been destroyed, mostly the trees.On that humid Thursday afternoon, Douglas County was hit by one of those wild Colorado storms that for tens of thousands of residents in Highlands Ranch is now an indelible life moment. Thankfully, no one was hurt by the technically small (EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita scale) but destructive tornado on June 22. Very few actually saw the twister cloaked in sheets of rain and hail as it hit Northridge Elementary School and blasted across homes and businesses for more than 6 miles just south of C-470, from Lucent Boulevard to Quebec StreetBut some doorbell cameras caught the action, like this one.Everyone who lives in the Doug...

Colorado is drought-free for the first time since 2019

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

Colorado is drought-free for the first time since 2019 — a stark change from a year ago, when 98% of the state was under drought conditions.A winter filled with heavy snow and a cooler, wetter-than-normal spring helped the state rebound from years of drought status, said Becky Bolinger, Colorado’s assistant state climatologist.The U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday issued its most recent map showing a lack of drought in all regions of Colorado. The week prior, a small swath of the southeast corner of the state remained in drought conditions.Colorado on Thursday was the only state in the Western U.S. and only one of four states in the country without any drought, according to the Drought Monitor. The other three states are Maine, South Carolina and New Hampshire.About 23% of the U.S. is in moderate or more severe drought, according to the Drought Monitor. Approximately 98 million people live in those drought areas. Colorado’s neighbors to the east — Kansas and N...

United Power, Tri-State Generation’s largest member, inks deal to buy electricity elsewhere

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s largest member, Brighton-based United Power, has agreed to start buying electricity from a different company as it prepares to end its contract with the wholesale power supplier.United Power said Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with Guzman Energy, a wholesale energy provider whose customers include other rural electric associations that have cut ties with Tri-State.United Power plans to leave Tri-State May 1, 2024. The lead-up to the planned departure has been marked by disagreements over how quickly to phase out coal as a power source, the transition to renewable energy, rates and how much of its own electricity United Power can produce.The two utilities’ dispute has played out in court and before regulators, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.United Power gave notice in 2021 that it would end its contract with Tri-State. United Power will have to pay to break its contract. But after a ruling by ...

Colorado’s marijuana industry calls this year’s 4/20 sales “the worst” in recent years

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

Colorado’s marijuana industry dubbed weed sales for this year’s 4/20 “the worst” in five years.The Marijuana Industry Group, a Denver-based trade association, is sounding the alarm bells for the state’s “struggling” industry, as falling sales compound with business closures and layoffs. This year, the market’s entrepreneurs are contending with too much supply, not enough demand, increased competition in other states, dropping prices, a dearth of cannabis tourism, the draw of black market weed and more.April’s marijuana sales – medical and retail combined – stood at close to $132 million, which counts as the lowest number in five years, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue. In April 2018, the number was about $124 million.This year, total medical marijuana sales looked especially dismal in April at almost $17 million. That’s the lowest amount ever recorded for that month since sales first started in January 2014.M...

Two places to see insane wildflower blooms this weekend

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

Something beautiful and unusual is happening in the southern part of the state this summer. Thanks to above-average moisture that has set the stage for an epic wildflower season there and elsewhere in the state, dazzling cactus blooms are erupting with seldom-seen abundance.“This year the yuccas flowered like I really have never seen them,” said Alex Crochet, horticulturist for the city of Colorado Springs. “Now the cactus are following suit. It’s very evident that this rain was really great for these plants to get them started. Now, down here, we have had 90-degree days back to back, and that heat is just making these really hot-loving plants bloom like crazy.”One of the places where this is unfolding spectacularly is the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.Cacti are blooming like crazy in southern Colorado, thanks to above-average moisture this year. This photo of a prickly pear was taken at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, which is having one...

Truck crashes into crowd during street takeover in Los Angeles

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

Street takeovers shut down intersections in the Hyde Park, Harvard Park, and Gramercy Park neighborhoods of South Los Angeles overnight.One of the incidents took place around midnight at the intersection of West Century Boulevard and Denker Avenue in the Gramercy Park area. A red pickup truck could be seen doing doughnuts in the street when it slammed into the curb. Street racers took over several neighborhoods in South Los Angeles on July 6, 2023. (Anonymous)The truck flew into the air, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle. It then drove into a crowd gathered in the intersection, but it was unclear if anyone was injured. 3 teens arrested for murder of pizza deliveryman helping assault victim in Stanton A Metro bus driver was recording some of the chaos on her cellphone when she became stuck in traffic. The bus driver appeared to be in good spirits but was concerned about the passengers. “I just feel bad for everyone who wants to go home,” the driver said as tires sq...

Thousands of thrill seekers, including Americans, take part in Spain's running of the bulls

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

Thousands of thrill seekers took part Friday in the first running of the bulls at the San Fermín festival in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.Several runners took knocks and hard falls in the 8 a.m. event but no one was gored by the beasts, a frequent feature of the spectacle.The festival attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists. Nearly 1.7 million people visited Pamplona for the celebrations in 2022, and forecasts are higher for this year with all COVID-19 constraints ended.La Palmosilla's fighting bulls run among revelers during the first day of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, Friday, July 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)In the run, six bulls guided by six tame oxen charged along a route through Pamplona’s streets for around two minutes and 30 seconds before reaching the bull ring.The festival was made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises.” This year marks the 100th anniversary of Hemingway’s first visit to the festival. Vietnam b...

Tech exec tells whirlwind tale of starting SF Unicorns, Bay Area’s cricket team in new U.S. league

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

LOS ALTOS — When Anand Rajaraman first came to the Bay Area to attend graduate school at Stanford in the 1990s, he kept his connection to his home of India by playing cricket with a tennis ball on Stanford’s oval lawn.After 30 years in the tech industry all in the Bay Area, Rajaraman is now hoping that the region is ready to embrace the sport that he has always loved.Rajaraman is a co-owner of the San Francisco Unicorns, one of six inaugural teams in Major League Cricket (MLC), a brand new league forming in the United States.“Over the past 25 years, more people from cricket-loving countries have come to the U.S.,” Rajaraman, 52, said. “Now, I think there’s enough of an audience for it to be the right time.”MLC will play a shorter version of cricket, popularized in the last 20 years, that may be more palatable to the American audience. The normal version of cricket often takes days to complete a four-inning game. MLC will use the Twenty20 (T20) version of cricket, which consists of o...

San Francisco’s weekday population dropped by 200,000 during the pandemic. Santa Clara County’s plunged too. What now?

Published Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:27 GMT

On a typical workday before the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of commuters flowed into San Francisco and Silicon Valley from around the region, swelling their daytime populations. Then COVID emptied streets and transit stations and quieted once bustling shops and restaurants that catered to the weekday crowds.A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau highlights just how big of a hit remote work had on the country’s commuter centers.San Francisco lost nearly 210,000 people during a typical workday in 2021 compared to 2019, a Bay Area News Group analysis found, and Santa Clara County saw a drop of nearly 110,000. That drop of more than 300,000 in what the Census calls the ‘commuter-adjusted population’ of the Bay Area’s two largest counties far outpaced — by nearly 100,000 — the decline in far-larger Los Angeles.On the flip side, Alameda and Contra Costa counties added tens of thousands to their workday populations between 2019 and 2021 as pre-pand...