<p>please…I went to college in Wisconsin. They got a huge dump during the winter break and I remember walking on sidewalks that were 3’ above street level for several months. </p>
<p>In 2 years, only once did they cancel any classes and that was night classes because 12" had already accumulated during the day. </p>
<p>We are alternating between the rain/snow line right now. White stuff on the ground is VERY heavy.</p>
<p>aquamarinesea - That precarious tree limb is nowhere near the house. It would only pose a potential danger to someone mowing the lawn, and that won’t happen anytime soon. We’re hoping it falls on its own before spring.</p>
<p>I hated listening on the radio or watching the TV for school closures when my kids were in school. Our town starts with an ‘S’, so we were always near the end of the alphabetical announcements. I’d have to remind myself to keep paying attention so I didn’t zone out by the time they got to our town and miss the announcement.</p>
<p>Growing up in NYC, we hardly ever had snow days. I remember one in junior high where we walked all the way to school only to find out that school was cancelled. The streets were so impassable that we were actually walking down the middle of the streets…there were no cars.</p>
<p>Sorry, BCEagle, for some reason I thought you worked in MA and lived in NH.</p>
<p>Because of my own experience in MN, I can’t tell you how many times I sent my kids down to wait for the bus only to find out that school was cancelled or on a delay. My kids learned to insist that I call before they would go down our enormous hill.</p>
<p>On the South Shore of Long Island… we have just changed over from rain to frozen precip and mixed snow. I worked at home but my office in midtown Manhattan closed at 3 PM. Older d on her way home from work at museum on 5th Ave and she said that 5th avenue is totally snow covered. Younger d is an off-Broadway show that is in previews and we saw last night…was waiting to see “if the show must go on”…</p>
<p>From looking at various traffic cams, there is surprisingly little traffic on the highways right now.</p>
<p>So it seems most people are taking the road closures seriously.</p>
<p>We are up to 1 to 2 inches, it looks like.</p>
<p>In the 2 snowstorms back to back in 1978, newly married DH and I lived in Brooklyn Heights. Not a chance that any snowplow could make it down those narrow streets, and those streets remained unplowed literally for about three weeks. I took the subway to work in Manhattan as usual, no problem. DH took the subway and met his secretary and her husband who both worked for him and drove the rest of the way as they worked at JFK airport. After the snow finally melted, he discovered he’d been parked at a hydrant the entire time.
I had a colleague that I used to work with on seminars who initially lived in Boston and then relocated to NY but he told me that he was stuck at JFK Airport during the Lindsay snowstorm and apparently a local funeral parlor was able to deliver coffins for stranded passengers to sleep in…</p>
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<p>I did a quick check on the web. Schools in numerous school districts in MN were closed last year, including Dec. 12 (10-15 inches of snow) and Feb. 29 (mix of snow and sleet). Maybe they are more inclined to close schools now compared to years past.</p>
<p>Schools where I grew up are definitely more cautious with regards to closing than when I was growing up because there have been a number of lawsuits associated with school bus accidents and injuries.</p>
<p>Aquamarinesea, not necessarily. The city of Minneapolis would not close schools if the city buses were running in my day. Since most of the bus lines ran on snow emergency routes (first plowed streets) and it was a priority not to shut down public transport, never once was school cancelled. Many suburbs did cancel schools during those years (I remember being very jealous). The problem wasn’t really snow, but the windchill. I know they have changed the way they report windchill, but walking to school in negative 40 windchill really sucked. (And no, you can’t feel the difference; it only changes the number of minutes you have before your extremities succumb to frostbite.)</p>
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<p>that’s what I should have said to my mom, while begging to stay home!</p>
<p>Canceling school: from my H’s MN hometown paper Last Week:<br>
[Must</a> be -50º F. with wind chill to cancel school - Grand Rapids Herald-Review: News](<a href=“http://www.grandrapidsmn.com/news/article_e876aadc-706a-11e2-a39c-001a4bcf887a.html]Must”>http://www.grandrapidsmn.com/news/article_e876aadc-706a-11e2-a39c-001a4bcf887a.html)</p>
<p>a bunch of hardy folks up there…</p>
<p>When I first moved to my town, the superintendent had the attitude that “if parents have to go to work, the schools will be open.” We were notorious for being open when every town around us had a snow day. One year the town right next to us had something like 9 more snow days than we did, and were in school until the end of June. Lots of unhappy people. They were talking about having school on Saturdays, in order to not go into July, which apparently would cause all kinds of legal issues.</p>
<p>Now, I’m afraid, we are not so intrepid. We could have easily done a half-day today, as there was very little on the road at 1 PM, and that’s what they originally planned, but ultimately wound up cancelling school.</p>
<p>More evidence of the wimpification of America. :D</p>
<p>As a parent I loved this policy, and you always had the option to keep your kid home without penalty if you thought it was too dangerous. The kids weren’t so keen on it.</p>
<p>No dog in this show any more, though.</p>
<p>There have been a few school cancellations in MN since we moved here, but none so far in Minneapolis. We have only had one storm so far. </p>
<p>I was watching something on TV about the worst blizzards in MN history, and one of the worst was in November 1940. One fisherman was found frozen sitting in his boat. The lake froze around the boat. Temperature dropped 60 degrees. </p>
<p>I don’t get what wind chill is, exactly, but I do notice that it sure is better, feels much warmer when there is no wind.</p>
<p>I looked it up, since I’m geeky like that. NOAA’s definition of windchill: “Is the cooling effect of wind on exposed skin.”</p>
<p>The formula to compute Wind Chill:
Wind chill temperature = 35.74 + 0.6215T - 35.75V (<strong>0.16) + 0.4275TV(</strong>0.16)</p>
<p>Where V is the wind speed in statute miles per hour and T is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit."</p>
<p>Basically, though, once you’ve lived in MN long enough, you recognize windchill as how much time you have to get your gloves on!</p>
<p>Warm air around your body acts as an insulator to keep you warm.</p>
<p>When the wind is blowing, it removes this layer of warm air, and your body loses heat faster. This makes you feel subjectively colder.</p>
<p>The faster the wind blows, the colder you subjectively feel.</p>
<p>The wind chill is how cold it would have to be with no wind for you to feel as cold with the wind blowing.</p>
<p>For example, if the temperature is 20 degrees with a wind chill of 0, that feels as cold as if the temp was 0 degrees with no wind.</p>
<p>We never had snow days growing up either…but we also ALL walked to school. Now almost all of the students take buses due to school consolidations. I don’t think most school admins want to risk bus accidents.</p>
<p>The headmaster of my private high school had a bet going with the headmaster of our rival school over which school was the toughest. As a result neither wanted to be the one to cancel school first, so even if every public school around us was closed we had to get to school however we could. I don’t remember a single snow day, although my mother did once declare one of her own.</p>
<p>For schools in my area I remember the issue being visibility. If the snowbanks were too high and the DPW crews hadn’t had the time to clear crosswalks because of an ongoing overnight storm, our elem. schools would have a delayed opening or occasionally be closed because school officials were concerned that children couldn’t see or be seen by drivers.</p>
<p>I don’t envy you all in the east. I hope none of you lose power. And if you have a natural gas furnace with the outlet at the side of the house, be sure that is kept clear! I remember when we had a 30" snowfall, some people died of carbon monoxide poisoning because that outlet was blocked by snow. </p>
<p>I remember listening to the radio for the school closings. My school district started with a “W” so it was really awful waiting through the whole alphabet! We had a few snow days a year, in my recollection, and it is about the same for my kids now. My community is much better about getting subdivision streets cleared than in the city where I grew up. </p>
<p>I liked having an excuse to not have to drive to work in that stuff when the kids were too little to stay home alone and had a snow day. Now I have the luxury of working from home when necessary, which is even better. I don’t have to use a vacation day and I don’t have to drive in that mess. The best of both worlds.</p>
<p>Well, right now we’re basically in whiteout. My new neighbor the neurologist shoveled his own driveway already. Like him. But I guess it’s in case he’s needed at the hosp.</p>
<p>“State-run liquor stores were slated to close at 6 p.m. Friday to encourage people to get off the roads by 7 p.m., when the storm is supposed to intensify.”</p>
<p>[A</a> state-by-state look at the blizzard in the northeastern US - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-state-by-state-look-at-the-blizzard-in-the-northeastern-us/2013/02/08/e0946e2c-7212-11e2-b3f3-b263d708ca37_story.html]A”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-state-by-state-look-at-the-blizzard-in-the-northeastern-us/2013/02/08/e0946e2c-7212-11e2-b3f3-b263d708ca37_story.html)</p>