Usually, the school districts seem the last entities to jump on the “snow” band wagon – the first being Jim Forman, school kids, and network weather. But for the first time in (my) recorded history, we had a snow day today with NO SNOW.
Sure, school has been closed for reasons other than snow before: boiler burst, flooding in the library, trees on the roof – but never has it been closed for snow that Didn’t. Actually. Appear. Schools usually wait until the threat is perilously treacherous, and even then they usually hedge their bets with a paltry “two hours late”. But this time, the school districts here got snowed.
The usually-reliable-and-somewhat-conservative National Weather Wervice was predicting 30% chance of snow on Tuesday (didn’t happen, but the odds weren’t that great) and a shocking 100%(!) chance of snow all day today. We woke up to drier roads than we’ve had all week, but schools were still closed – they heard the reports of imminent and heavy snow for the day and probably figured it would be a royal pain to send kids home early (it’s nearly impossible) and called the day off instead. The thing is, it’s 7:14pm, and there’s still no snow.
The networks are covering their bases, saying “the (Olympic) mountains ‘stole’ all our snow”. The districts north and west of us are covered in a few inches – but they are more likely to get snow anyway. Us? Our roads are bare and dry. Monday I was praying for a late start after this weekend’s ACTUAL snow, but our district was one of the only ones to abstain. I had to navigate a bit of ice on my way to work, but it wasn’t too bad. But today? Bare. And. Dry. We actually have less snow today than was on the ground on Monday.
So, the boys and I were holed up here with no snow to speak of. A snow day just doesn’t have the same feel when there’s no actual snow. I’m glad I didn’t have to teach today – trying to keep a bunch of snow-watching 7th graders on task would have been nearly impossible – but it wasn’t a great day at home, either.
Of course, the weather service is saying “No, really – that snow is still coming…just after midnight TONIGHT, not LAST night. I guess we were off by a day. Ha ha. It could happen to anyone.” I guess we’ll see what tomorrow holds. Although I suppose that the districts, not wanting to fall for it again, will wait for near white-out conditions before even considering a “one hour late start”.
p.s. If you’ve read this far into this post that has no real point – congratulations! As your reward, please go check out this post by Defective Yeti – a man far more humorous than I. Of course, if you’re under 30, his post will make no sense at all.