It has been a while since Denver has shivered through what meteorologists refer to as the ‘Polar Vortex,’ a weather phenomenon that envelopes the region every winter. When it arrives temperatures nosedive. Last weekend, the city and bitter cold reunited. But, while cold, over the years, it has been a lot colder.
On December 22, 1990, the National Weather Service recorded the city’s coldest temperature ever when the mercury plunged to -25⁰. There have been similar freezes here, too. But that figure has stood the test of time. But cold? Really? Alamosa shrugged.
Alamosa, the hub of the San Luis Valley and abutted by two of the state’s most beautiful mountain ranges—the Sangre de Cristo and San Juans—regularly deals with bitter cold. But it has been a few years since the town had a day like January 28th, 1949. On that day, the mercury dove to a surreal -50⁰. For comparison, an average winter day’s temperature at the North Pole is -24⁰.
What makes Alamosa and a few other spots in Colorado so susceptible to big chill weather, said Mark Wankowski of Pueblo’s National Weather Service, is topography, the physical features of the land. Wankowski said it “allows the cold air to slide down the higher terrain and collect in valley locales.” Other factors in trapping the cold, he said, are “low sun angles…and ground cover” making the air immovable.
Outsiders might joke about Alamosa’s bitter temperatures, but not Amanda Pearson. The Boulder native came to Alamosa to attend Adams State University and now, years later, calls this mountain town home.
Today she heads up some of the programs offered by the La Puente, an agency that provides emergency housing, food services and legal assistance to homeless and low-income citizens. Each winter presents a new challenge.
While every large American city has homeless populations, so too, said Pearson, do small towns. ‘Rural homelessness,’ she calls it, a reality little known in metropolitan hubs. “Homelessness looks really different in these communities,” she said. “We don’t have shelters.” In places like Alamosa, Pearson said,many of the unhoused scramble and if they’re lucky find shelter in abandoned places, “a lot of alleys…campers not too close to the grid or hiding on BLM properties.” Sometimes, she said, “It’s hard to find them.”
In some cases, Pearson said, when there is no place to go, it is not uncommon for a homeless person to simply walk all night to keep from freezing to death. In some cases, these are people who have been turned away from La Puente because they are drunk or high on drugs. La Puente, she said, is a ‘dry shelter.’ Clients must be sober.
The most recent count for Alamosa’s unhoused, said Pearson, is 316, a number that includes people all across the valley. The figure also includes families, she said. But the number may have grown. “We only do a whole Valley count every couple of years and we are sure these numbers are low.” But, Pearson said, on a per capita basis, the numbers, especially in a place like Alamosa, are “a bit higher over all than the state average.” For the second week of January, Pearson estimates that La Puente has served 85 clients. But that still leaves a wide gulf for everyone who needs help.
“We have fatalities every winter, but hopefully, less and less.” Pearson said La Puente, along with community members, hold a winter vigil, a remembrance for those who have become casualties of winter. “It is a public health issue,” Pearson said. “But you can’t just throw people away because they’re homeless.”
Outsiders regularly ask, said Pearson, ‘why don’t the homeless just go to cities’ where facilities are equipped to offer meals and housing, especially in winter. She said there are all kinds of reasons for staying, including family or perhaps it’s simply the grip of the familiar. But when winter delivers its annual knock-out punch, asking questions is not the priority and not really important. Homelessness, she said, is a reality.
