Upslope storms come at Longmont backwards, pushing in from the northeast off the plains until the peak the town looks at every day disappears completely. Longs Peak Landscape reads those forecasts the way other people read the paper, because a wet, heavy foot of it is an entirely different job than dry January powder. Driveways get opened, walks get cut down to the concrete, and ice gets treated at the steps and out by the mailbox. The reward arrives when the clouds lift off the Front Range and a whole street is already passable. Getting somebody out of their own driveway on time is a quiet kind of good work.