Top five most-read stories last week
Lynn Goldsmith/Courtesy photo
Stories in this list received the most page views on aspentimes.com from Sept. 29-Oct. 6.
1. Aspen man arrested after alleged downtown knife assault
An Aspen man was arrested downtown in the early hours of Saturday morning after allegedly attempting to stab multiple other men, and successfully cutting one, Aspen Police reported.
Three men, who were 46, 30, and 32, contacted an Aspen Police cruiser along the 400 block of E. Hopkins Ave., Aspen, at about 2:29 a.m. Saturday, according to a police affidavit. The 46-year-old told police, “This guy just tried to stab me,” while pointing to Reese M. Castiglioni, age 39 from Aspen, who was standing near them holding what police noted appeared to be a knife.
Police reported that before the alleged incident, the men — including the 46-year-old, the 30-year-old, the 32-year-old, and another man, who is 35 — had been standing on the southeast corner of 400 E. Hopkins Ave. waiting for a taxi, when they watched Castiglioni walking westbound down the center of the street.
-Skyler Stark-Ragsdale
2.Authorities give insight into review of Hunter S. Thompson’s death
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is reviewing the 2005 death of famed author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson at the request of Thompson’s widow.
Anita Thompson, who survives the late Aspen journalist, went to Pitkin County Sheriff Michael Buglione earlier this year with new concerns about the death of her husband.
On Feb. 20, 2005, Hunter Thompson died of “an alleged self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head” at his residence in Woody Creek, which the original investigation concluded was a suicide, according to a press release published on Tuesday by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
-Skyler Stark-Ragsdale
As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts operations in Colorado mountain communities this summer, the federal agency has notified some local law enforcement agencies of its activities — but not others.
Sheriffs in Summit, Pitkin, and Garfield counties said that they consider it a matter of public safety for federal law enforcement agencies to notify local authorities of operations that are planned in their jurisdictions.
“What we don’t want is a blue-on-blue incident. That’s why you would want to communicate, for that reason more than any reason,” Pitkin County Sheriff Michael Buglione said, noting that ICE has alerted his office of its operations in the county this summer.
-Ryan Spencer
4.Colorado skiers may need to wait longer for snow this winter
Colorado’s ski season may see a later start this winter as unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures and a budding La Niña are forecast to delay snowfall across much of the Rockies.
The consensus thus far is that climate patterns are trending toward a weak La Niña phase, which signals a shift towards drier-than-average conditions. According to meteorologists at OpenSnow, the latest sea surface temperature anomaly in part of the Eastern Equatorial Pacific is -0.4ºC, just shy of the -0.5ºC threshold needed to reach La Niña.
This only shows a lean toward La Niña because the threshold “must be met for five consecutive 3-month overlapping periods” for it to officially be classified as a La Niña. However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest outlook shows a 71% chance of La Niña from October to December, with neutral conditions returning by spring.
-Andrea Teres-Martinez
5.Major publication claims Aspen airport is ‘most stressful,” but data is unreliable
The popular travel magazine Travel + Leisure published an article Monday claiming the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport is the most stressful in the U.S.
Their claim was based on flight delays, cancellations, and Google reviews that were bundled together with different weights to produce a list of the most stressful airports based on which airports had the worst combination of those factors. The source, however, was a randomizer website where users can “spin the wheel” to produce random outcomes called spinthewheelgenerator.com.
The website has no data, blog posts, or reports about anything related to airport data or air travel-related stress factors.
-Colin Suszynski
