National Guard crews delivered food and other supplies Saturday to hundreds of travelers and residents stranded after a spring storm covered the Denver area with more than 3 feet of snow.

Two truckloads of cots, blankets and meals arrived in Denver with the troops on Saturday morning.

More than 500 people spent the night at three shelters after the closure of an 80-mile stretch of I-70 in the mountains, said Jim Rettew, an American Red Cross spokesman.

“It’s very, very hard to speculate as to when traffic is going to be allowed back on the road,” Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman Fritz Homann said early Saturday. “There seems to be a lull in the storm, but whether the second wave comes in as advertised will be anybody’s guess.”

A mixture of rain and snow continued falling across the state Saturday morning, and Entrekin said the southern Denver metro area could see 2 to 5 more inches before the storm tapers off Saturday evening.

Denver International Airport was open and no flight cancelations were reported. On Friday, United Airlines, the airport’s dominant carrier, canceled 76 flights.

Though the weather system was weakening Saturday, the cleanup was only just beginning.

Homann said some motorists were still stuck on Interstate 70 at Hidden Valley early Saturday, but crews were working hard to get them out.

“This is a big storm, but it is a spring storm in the Colorado Rockies, and that is something that CDOT has dealt with before,” he said. “We have all our resources poised and ready to go.”

The heaviest snowfall was in the foothills west of Denver, with 43 inches at Pinecliffe and 36 at Black Hawk, said weather service meteorologist Scott Entrekin. He said April could sometimes be one of the state’s snowiest months.

Transportation officials shut down an 80-mile stretch of I-70 between Vail and Golden late Friday afternoon because of wet, heavy snow and multiple accidents.

(Source: Fox News)