Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Snow Must Go On

After more than six years of virtually no snow, we had almost 2" of snow (measured at my house--your snowdrifts may vary) yesterday, and every weathercaster seems confident that we're going to have that much or more again late Friday night/early Saturday morning (it's Thursday evening as I write this).

"So exactly how long has it been since we had significant snow?" you ask the ol' weather record-keeper. The answer is "four years, two weeks, and one day." We had a heavy 6" snowfall on January 2nd, 2002; all of our snowfalls since that time have been light dustings of 1/2" or less... most of them, in fact, were so light that they didn't even cover the roads evenly. (We've had freezing rain twice since then, but that's not snow, is it?)

Last night's snow was the kind that drives students insane: it snowed heavily starting about 6pm, snowed for three or four hours, then warmed up, shifted to rain, and the snow was so diminished by sunrise the next morning that kids had to go to school. I'm sure that, had I been outsite at sunrise, I could have heard the communal groans of teachers and students echoing over hill and dale...

And to prove that nature can be twice cruel, this next snowfall is predicted to fall on a weekend, thereby impacting students' time off but not their school schedule.

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