Mark and Courtney were scheduled to board a

                                flight to Oakland where we were to pick them up

                                at 4 p.m. today, December 21, 2006.  Instead.....   

Stranded travelers lined up at ticket counters at snowbound Denver International Airport on Thursday, 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 2,500 of them.

Outside, Denver's streets were empty, and long stretches of highway in the eastern Colorado were so impassable, even the mail couldn't get through. Bus and light rail service in a six-county region was suspended. The Colorado Avalanche postponed Thursday night's hockey game against the Calgary Flames. Wednesday night's basketball game between the Denver Nuggets and Phoenix Suns was also called off.

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

"I just want to get out of here," she said.

More than 3 feet of snow had fallen in some mountain areas since Wednesday morning, and up to 25 inches fell in the Denver metro area, including 2 more inches on 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 New Mexico on Friday.

In southeastern Wyoming, the heavy snow closed highways Wednesday, stranding travelers and sending government workers home early in Cheyenne.

The amount of snow was hard to measure because it wasn't evenly distributed.

"We have drifts up to 6 feet high in some locations, and in other areas, it is completely dry on the asphalt and concrete," said Mike Sowko, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Cheyenne.

In Denver, Colorado Springs and other cities along the Rocky Mountain Front Range, workers slipped and slid their way home on Wednesday and stayed there, leaving the cities virtual ghost towns Thursday.

Three more inches of wind-whipped snow was expected Thursday before tapering off in the afternoon. Parts of Nebraska and Kansas were also getting snow and ice, but farther east, warmer temperatures meant even Chicago was only forecast to get heavy rain as the storm moved through.

In Colorado's socked-in eastern half, Gov. Bill Owens declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard, which assisted dozens of motorists on the highways around Denver and delivered diapers and bottled water to Denver's airport.

Long stretches of Interstates 70, 25 and 76, major east-west and north-south routes through the Mountain West, were closed.

National Guard and sheriff's deputies rescued about 50 people overnight from snowbound vehicles in Weld County, where up to 22 inches of snow fell. About 18 others were still stuck in their cars Thursday morning, said Weld County emergency management director Roy Rudisill. In the Denver suburb of Broomfield, police rescued nearly 100 people stranded in cars along U.S. 36, the main route between Denver and Boulder.

"It's just amazing how many people are still out there," said Robert Thompson, spokesman for a local American Red Cross chapter. He said at least 270 people were in shelters in the Denver area and the Red Cross provided 140 cots for nearly 350 people stranded at a Greyhound bus station downtown.

The storm was the most powerful to hit Colorado since March 2003, when a massive blizzard dumped up to 11 feet of snow in the mountains over several days and was blamed for at least six deaths.

Thirteen hours after Alan Barr left his Denver office for a bus ride home to Boulder, he was stuck at a Red Cross shelter in Denver, not much closer to home than when he left. His bus had set out from Denver hours late, then had to turn back.

Barr trudged into the shelter shortly after midnight with other discouraged riders but said he had not given up on the bus system.

"Days like today are an exception," he said.