IS THE NASTY 90 OVER? CROSS YOUR FINGERS

Ninety days make a winter, at least to the National Weather Service.

For statistical purposes, the NWS calls the calendar months of December, January and February winter, although winter weather can happen clear through Denver's snowy spring months of March and April.

This winter there was snow on the ground about 80 percent of the time. It was snowing one day out of every four. It snowed on nine weekends out of 13.

Here's how the Nasty 90 of winter shaped up:

23 days of snow

50.8 inches of snow

73 days with snow on the ground

67 degrees was the highest temperature on Dec. 15

-18 degrees was the lowest temperature on Feb. 2

7 days fell to zero degrees or below

• Days it snowed most often: Friday and Saturday

• Second-most often days that it snowed: Sunday and Monday

• Only day of the week that it didn't snow: Tuesday

PURIM = SPOOF

Purim, the lighthearted Jewish holiday that began Saturday, caught one unsuspecting Coloradan in its net.

In keeping with Purim's mischievous, April Fools-like profile, Intermountain Jewish News published a sham announcement that a local synagogue had just hired a certain notorious Holocaust denier as its senior rabbi.

One aghast reader called the Rocky Mountain News for an investigation.

"It's a spoof! It's a spoof!" says Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, IJN's executive editor. "All Jewish newspapers do those spoofs!"