You've gotta be kidding me

My kids schools are closed today because of inclement weather later today. They seriously closed the schools before a flake of snow has appeared. And our area is only supposed to get 1-3". Really??? I have to miss a day of work right before Christmas because of maybe an inch of snow??? REALLY?? :headbang:

When I was their age, we went to school with two feet of snow on the ground!! And we walked! Barefoot! Uphill, both ways!! Okay, not really, but I did live in upstate New York so we did go to school with 2 feet of snow on the ground on a regular basis. Like every day.

It appears my good luck streak ended abruptly this morning. :laughing:

 

:gah: That is irritating.

 

Hahaha, you should come live in the deep south for a minute. If they even hint at a snowflake a week away people panic!

But yeah, I would be frustrated with that too!

 

It really IS annoying. We live in a VERY hilly part of the state .. so our schools really can't take any chances .. but I've seen them call off school and it ended up being a false alarm. I feel for those parents that have to work, lucky for me I have older children and never had to call out.

 

I would have griped, too. We have the same forecast and the schools are open. Both boys have a field trip this morning so I'm glad they can go. The snow has just started falling here so we'll see if they stay open all day. As I recall, it was a year ago next week when we had a 20" blizzard that prematurely started the winter break.

 

I was going to say the same thing!!

A preemptive closing? Wow, that's strange.

People here panic at the sight of a flake too. I've actually seen very expensive cars abandoned on the side of the road with just a dusting of snow. It's just silly.

 

How frustrating!

Couldn't they save the day for when they really need a snow day? Ya know, with an accumulation of snow on the ground!

 

My area is very hilly so that might have something to do with it. But the next county over which is completely flat is closed too, so I dunno. This area is just freaked out.

It started snowing about a half hour ago and it's actually accumulating pretty fast. Click to see my driveway!

I called my boss to tell her I can't come in and she was at the bus stop with her kids, she said "I was wondering why the bus was so late." :laughing:

 

They cancelled school here for 3 days because of less than 2 inches of snow. Where I went to college, we had 2 feet of snow during finals week and we were all still walking to class with snow up to our knees. When I was pregnant, they didn't plow my street very often so I would have to walk to work (about a mile) in snow up to my knees. Let's toughen these kids up

 

That's what I'm saying! It's just snow, gimme a break!! :laughing:

Last year, the community college I went to down here closed because of rain. :umm:

 

I'm sure every store in the area is completely out of bread, milk and bottled water.

I better go fill my bathtub up with water!!

 

I actually understand that one. My dh got a Lexus IS350 about 2 years ago. It came with high performance sport tires on it. He knew they wouldn't be great in the snow, but it wasn't until we had those first few flakes and he literally couldn't get his car to stop that he realized he had a problem. He left his car parked at work for 3 days and we shared mine until the roads dried up and he could drive it home. The next week we put different tires on it. It's still not great in the snow because it's rear-wheel drive, but it's better. So, if they are rear-wheel drive cars with high performance tires on it, they really probably need to be on the side of the road. A lot of people with the higher-end cars have 2 sets of wheels, one set of wheels with summer tires and one set with winter tires.

Marissa

 

I live in Colorado (in the desert section) and people around here panic if it's more than a heavy frost. But on the other hand school doesn't get closed unless it's a blizzard. (Which we had last year. It was really cool. I've never seen that much snow.)

 

I feel your pain. We live through the two blizzards last year in Washington. The schools canceled so many days that there was panic about how to make them up (without extending the school year which already goes to late June).
And who cares about stocking up on bread or butter? Toilet paper is the most essential thing during a "blizzard."

 

You must live in Calvert, huh? We are in St. Mary's

 

I don't get the way people panic either. I'm from Colorado (foothills of the Rockies area, just outside Denver right getting into the mountains) and we seriously went to school with 5 feet of snow ALL of the time. I can recall one snow day and I'm not even sure why that happened because it melted off by 10am.. Then one time we got snowed in on our spring break!! All of the surrounding counties didn't have break until the next week so they basically got 2 weeks!

I lived in Tennessee for a short while and the talk of snow scared all of them. Heck, I see their facebook statuses about how bad the snow is (1-2 inches) and I've recently started to comment on them and pictures of the horrible snow they've gotten! Give me a break people!!

In Dec 2006-Jan 2007 we had 3 back to back blizzards in CO with a few days in between all of them. Snow stayed around 5 feet (at this time I lived even further into the mountains) the whole time. I called my boss once to see if the we (bed bath and beyond) was going to open up because I didn't want to drive in for nothing. It was an hour drive anyways because I still chose to work in downtown Denver. It took me 4 hours to get to work only to be told 10 minutes later we were shutting down because the rest of the mall had and we were forced to. So stupid, I ended up giving a bunch of co-workers rides home cause they were too scared or some of them road the bus, but the bus had stopped running too because it was so bad. I drove to my parents (only 10 miles away from my work) and stayed the rest of the blizzard there. Needless to say, it still took me 2 hours to get to my parents!!

 

when I was working we have a second office in Chattanooga TN (we are in Scranton PA) and every time they got more than a dusting of snow their office closed...they closed more than we did!!!

 

I would be peeved if our school cancelled because of a possibility. We get 5 snow days planned into the school year and every day after that means the school year is extended. I would be fine with the year being extended but EVERY day (in years past) that the year is extended are waisted days of fun activities not really the learning structured days they would have had on the snow day they lost.

 

Yup! We did live down by Pax, but we moved up here to get the kids in a better school.



Last year when we were hit by three snowstorms in a row, I know the schools closed a lot. My boys were in pre-K and missed 3 or 4 weeks of school, but I don't remember about the regular schools and how late they had to go to make up the days. I wasn't working at the time so it wasn't a big deal. I don't know what I'd do now that I'm working again. Hopefully we'll never see that much snow again!

 

I went to college in Seattle and still remember when they shut the school down after it snowed 2 inches. :laughing:
Where I live now they freak out when it rains because there isn't too much of that.

I still can't wrap my mind around this. Do we live in the tropics or something? It snows all around here, just not here. I lived 3 hours away from GJ for about 5 years and never realized how warm the winters are here.

 

Last week when there was a dusting, it seriously screwed things up! The roads got very slippery. It took me over 2 hrs to get home from what is normally a 20 minute trip. I really thought I was going to wreck the car a few times, and I'm a pretty good snow driver. The roads were very, very slick. The girls' school bus was an hour late getting home (school was already a half day, which kind of added to the chaos, the buses didn't have time to put chains on or anything). Some kids got stuck on buses for hours, or the buses went back to school. So, at least as far as my county goes, I can see why they dismissed early this time. But they didn't announce it until the snow had started, at least.
I think one of the downfalls of having county school systems, as opposed to town-based, is that they have to take the entire county in account when making a decision. I live in a somewhat rural area, and there are some windy roads. (I'm in Carroll Co, MD btw). But some areas of the county are even more rural, with one-lane, twisty roads. Then there's sections that are more typical suburbs with 6-lane highways and normal subdivisions. So, it's tough to make a one-size fits all decision for a big county.

Although yes, people in MD do freak out a bit about snow.

 

If you are talking about last Friday, I agree the roads got very slippery with just a dusting. I was out with one of my kids and just my 5 mile drive home I slid 3 times. I ended up not taking the kids to preschool that afternoon becuase the roads were so bad.

Our schools here closed 2 hours early today and we have about 1.5 inches, but it started snowing earlier than expected. These days I am glad we are so close to school that my DD is a walker (well a car rider in the winter) and I don't have to worry about her getting home late due to a bus.



Kate-how much snow did you end up getting? I know they were saying south of DC was getting more than us. Was it worth school closing for the day?

 

Down here, the area is more rural than not. I do get the reasons for closing school, just not why they would do it before it even starts! I mean, 99% of snow forecasts are horribly wrong anyway! Oh well. We're moving south soon, and I'm sure then I'll be whining about never seeing snow. :laughing:

 

We don't have this issue in Florida...the last time my area got anything like snow was in 1989. They had to close down everything (it was Christmas Break so school was already out). All the bridges were shut down due to ice, the malls all were closed by 2 pm and people were in a panic!

 

I think we got 3, maybe 4 inches. So probably worth an early dismissal. When my husband came home around noon, he said the main roads were fine but our road is awful. The buses don't go off the main roads though, so I think they would have been fine. Although no one down here knows how to drive in the snow either.

 

Now I'm wondering if they'll close school tomorrow too. I had big plans for tomorrow.

 

The same thing happens here. I used to think it was silly until a few times when we got caught up in a "surprise" weather issue and had to try and get to school and get home with kids in tow. Our roads are not fun. Hilly, windy, narrow, no shoulders. The main roads can be great but we can't get out of or into our neighhorhood. People just abandon their cars on the roads to walk home. This was our road last year after less than an inch of snow. :lol: Crazy! Especially for a girl from Northern Wisconsin.

 

Our schools here closed this morning before the snow even started, too....but it's a good thing they did, I think. We had about 4 inches. I know it doesn't sound like much, but we are a rural area with lots of backroads, including many that are unpaved, and lots of hilly areas. Last time it was like this and they didn't close before it started snowing, three or four buses ended up in ditches on the country roads and parents had a FIT. And besides all that, DH is a teacher, so I'm glad he got a day off (and he's off tomorrow, too).

 

I wish they would close schools here more often but, unless it snows a couple of feet overnight (which is very rare for us) or the power is out, our kids are in school. We hardly ever get snow days.

 

We got 2 inches in DC, and closer to 4 out in my part of Loudoun County.

 

We're on our third snow day this week (tomorrow is already cancelled). We had a 2 hour delay on Tuesday as well. So my kids only had 1 full day of school this week. We have about a foot of snow. The problem here is that we live in the city, but much of the county is rural. So they cancel based on the road conditions in the rural areas when the schools in the city really have no reason to close!

 

That is frustrating. Our problem down here is that when is does snow, nobody is prepared. People in Mississippi do not own snow plows, lol, and even if they did, it would never snow enough to warrant using one. So yeah, just about everything shuts down when it snows. I spent most of my childhood in the Dakotas and Germany so I miss the snow but I really don't know what I would do if it snowed 2 or 3 feet down here!

 

I can understand the freaking outness (is that a word?). Here in Las Vegas people freak out when it rains, because of flooding and because the roads get super slick quick. In Mississippi, no one knows how to drive in the rain, plus there is no salt trucks or plows, so yeah they need to close if they get snow or else there will be wrecks.

I lived in Maine for 4 yrs, and it snowed all the time in the Winter, we never missed school except for big blizzards.

Brandy

 

Hurray! My boys are actually in school today. Maybe they will finally get their exams in!!

 

I should add that for our less than 2 inches we got yesterday, schools got out 2 hours early and today they are going in 2 hours late as well. :lol: All for less than 2 inches of snow. I will say though, I would rather the schools err on the side of caution. :good: