Snow Day called before snow is even on the ground??

January 20, 2009 at 3:50 pm 1 comment

Last night I watched How I Met Your Mother and the News. The whole time, there were school closings being sprawled across the bottom of the screen due to the “possible snow storm” hitting the Triangle in the morning. At that moment, there was no snow on the ground and it was still about 40 degrees outside.

There was the possibility that we could get 1-4″ of snow and that is enough to shut the city down. Before there was even a snowflake on the ground, schools were closed. I understand that it is different here than it is in Detroit. Raleigh is not equipped with all the abundance of tools needed for snow removal like Detroit so it is always better to be safe and call off school. And for the maybe one time a year of snowfall we get here, how can you blame the city for not having that equipment? Not really cost efficient to have it for one day a year.

However, I remember when I was young waiting in anticipation in the morning right before school. Hoping…praying… that by 6am there would be enough snow on the ground to close school so we could have a snow day. There was no early announcements of school closings in Michigan like there are in Raleigh. Schools in Michigan wait until the morning of to make the call if they are going to close or have a delayed start. For this miracle to happen (a true miracle to the kids in Michigan as snow days are few and far between), there would have to be at least a foot of snow on the ground with more on the way. It would have to be falling at the rate that snowplows, etc. could not keep up and the roads were completely buried.

It kind of looses some of the excitement if you know the night before about a snow day. In Michigan, you would wake up early and sit in front of the TV crossing your fingers that your school’s name would pop up. Many times, no such luck. So when it did actually come up on the screen you would go from zero to 60, grab your gloves, and head outside to play with a big smile.

In the spirit of the “Snow Day,” Keego and I took some photographs outside. Happy Snow Day!!