Colorado history

Thursday, November 5, 2026

The 1946 snow finally runs out of ideas at 3 a.m., and a Denver baby who preferred work to dolls becomes the silent era's first real child star.

Helen Alice Myres is born in Denver and becomes Baby Marie Osborne

1911 · Denver

Born Helen Alice Myres, she is quickly adopted by Leon and Edith Osborn, who rename her Marie. By five she is the first major child star of American silent films.

November 5, 1911, Denver delivers Helen Alice Myres. Within months she is living with Leon and Edith Osborn (they added the final e), who call her Marie. The family heads to Long Beach in 1914 for work at Balboa Studios. No babysitter means the three-year-old tags along.

Director Henry King needs a boy, spots her Dutch bob, and casts her anyway. By 1916 she is starring in Little Mary Sunshine and a string of films as Baby Marie. Dolls follow. Audiences call her the sweetest little girl in the moving-picture world. The child-star chapter ends around 1919 with Miss Gingersnap.

Adult Marie works as a stand-in for Ginger Rogers and others, then spends decades as a Hollywood costumer on everything from Spartacus to The Godfather Part II. She lives to 99 and dies six days after her 2010 birthday. The Denver birth certificate is still the origin story.

Sources: Wikipedia: Marie Osborne Yeats · IMDb: Marie Osborne

The 1946 snowstorm finally stops just after 3 a.m. on November 5

1946 · Denver

After nearly 71 hours, the flakes quit. Downtown has 30.4 inches; Stapleton 31. Schools closed, streetcars stalled, buildings strained, secondary roads blocked for weeks.

The storm that began at 4:22 a.m. on November 2 runs out of material at 3:08 a.m. on the 5th. Seventy hours and forty-six minutes of continuous precipitation, the second-longest stretch on record at the time and one of the heaviest snowfalls the city had seen.

The total is 30.4 inches downtown and 31 at Stapleton. Depth on the ground hits 28 inches at the airport. Cars sit abandoned. Football games are canceled. Livestock losses run high on the eastern plains. The water content alone exceeds the previous entire-month November record.

It takes more than two weeks for the snow to melt. November 1946 finishes as one of Denver's snowiest months on record. The city has seen bigger storms, but few that arrived this early and refused to leave.

Sources: NWS Denver/Boulder weather history · Denver Post: biggest November snowstorms

November 5 weather extremes: 78°F or 12°F, and Bill Walton is born

1952 · Denver / La Mesa, CA

Record high 78°F in 2023. Record low 12°F in 1959. Most snow on the date is 6 inches in 1938. And the Big Redhead arrives in Southern California with a lifelong soft spot for Colorado.

Denver on November 5 can swing hard. The all-time high is 78°F, set in 2023 and only a couple of degrees off the monthly record. The all-time low is 12°F from 1959. Most snow on the date is 6.0 inches in 1938; most precipitation 0.51 inches the same year.

Also born today: Bill Walton, November 5, 1952, in La Mesa, California. The UCLA and NBA center, two-time champion, and gloriously digressive broadcaster spent decades talking about Colorado the way some people talk about a favorite relative. He rode bikes through the mountains, married a son off in Aspen, and called Nikola Jokić the embodiment of the place. He died in 2024. The state still gets the shout-outs.

Average high on the date is near 57°F. The chance of measurable snow is low but never zero. If the forecast looks ordinary, remember the city has already done both extremes.

Sources: Extreme Weather Watch Denver Nov 5 · Colorado Sun: Bill Walton loved Colorado · Wikipedia: Bill Walton