AURORA | Aurora residents started to return to normal weekday life Thursday, a day after a spring blizzard dumped two feet of heavy snow, snarling traffic, closing roads, schools and knocking out power.

For Aurora police, Wednesday’s blizzard was without question the worst weather-related mess of the winter season. Officer Al Graham of the department’s traffic section said the heavy wind and snow, combined with Interstate 70 in Aurora being closed  meant a day filled with traffic messes on and off the highway.

In all, police received 96 reports of car crashes on Wednesday, but Graham said motorists are still filing reports today from yesterday’s mess. The city not only went on accident alert, but police enacted a policy of responding only to calls they deemed emergencies. Many officers reported being unable to get to calls because of road conditions and stuck cars.

“There’s obviously going to be more coming in,” he said, noting that none of the accidents involved serious bodily injury.

The storm was the worst of the season, Graham said, and police scrambled all day to navigate snowy roads and abandoned cars as they tried to respond to as many calls as they could.

“With that many coming in, you can’t get to all of them,” Graham said.

Both Aurora Public Schools and Cherry Creek School District canceled school for a second consecutive day Thursday. Both districts are expected to be in session Friday before beginning the weeklong spring break period.

As of about 11 a.m. this morning, Xcel Energy, the energy provider for much of the Denver metro area and about 60 percent of the state’s population, reported that about 32,000 of the company’s customers remained without power. Mark Stutz, a spokesman for Xcel, said that the March 23 storm has affected about 300,000 Xcel customers in total.

Stutz said that rising temperatures and melting snow can lead to additional outages due to a so-called snapback effect.

“As the snow starts coming off the trees and the lines, you get that snap back that can lead to some outages,” he said.

In a statement posted on the Xcel website late Wednesday, the company said that it expects to restore electricity to 97 percent of its customers who had lost power during the spring storm.

The City of Aurora had between 48 and 42 plows out on the roads, plus heavy equipment, yesterday and today, according to city spokeswoman Julie Patterson. 

— Reporters Brandon Johansson, Quincy Snowdon and Rachel Sapin contributed to this report.