Rochester, NY airport information needed

Parent Cafe
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<p>Would that early October storm have been in 2007? I remember flying into Buffalo a couple of days after it, and driving to Syracuse. The damage was unbelievable, but once you got an hour or so from Buffalo, you could hardly tell it had snowed anywhere. I think schools were closed for about a week.</p>

<p>When my D was at Syracuse, she drove to Buffalo several times to fly home to Chicago (so she could fly Southwest). She just always knew to check the weather the day before so she could more efficiently time her departure. Last winter when she drove home for winter break, she was scheduled to drive down to Allentown, spend the night there with her sister, then they would both drive home together. The day she was scheduled to drive to Allentown, there was an awful blizzard, and she just couldn’t leave Syracuse. So she waited until the next day, got up early (the roads were cleared by then), drove to Allentown, collected her sister and they were both so eager to get home, that they drove straight through, getting home around 1AM. They did the reverse in January when they had to return to school.</p>

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<p>Teri, you might have seen the “October Surprise” which was an awful thing on October 14 when a very heavy, wet snow fell upon open fully open autumn leaves. The leaves caught the snow like catcher’s mitts, and the weight broke several hundred thousands of trees, downing power lines for a week. It included SAT Saturday for my son, and we couldn’t even figure out if they were cancelled because the power outages affected everyone’s computer. There was a postponement of that testing only in the Buffalo area and in a particular region of India due to flooding. </p>

<p>But hey, this hardly ever happens.</p>

<p>I want to quote you because I think you figured out the very best safety strategies right here for students to deal with snow and holiday scheduling: </p>

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<p>Although every parent wants to see the kid home on the scheduled day, if we can just keep in mind that the student is best off to choose the best timing according to the weather. This might mean a student arrives a full day later; or needs to be packed up to depart a half-day sooner. The hour-by-hour forecast on weather.com is a big help. </p>

<p>I recommend teaching kids to consult the weather forecast and keep a window of time open for departure, and leave when it’s optimal. Parents can encourage them to pull over and stay in a motel if necessary. I’ve been driving many years and once each winter, I must do this because of white-out conditions on the road. If I thought I had to plow forward, to meet family expectations to be at a certain meal at a certain time, I might not make the wisest safety decision. </p>

<p>I guess I’m saying to cultivate a flexible approach and understand if a kid cannot make it home timely to a particular meal. They could easily think they should push on to please the family, when in fact they should stay put until the weather clears.</p>

<p>I suppose this applies mostly to driving home. Planes are harder to be “flexible”, because there are tickets with a time-table. In that case, urge kids to arrive very early at an airport (driving when weather is optimal), even if they end up sitting in an airport for several hours or a half-day, just to ensure they are in the right place. This is hard for students, leaving a half-day early just to sit in an airport, but sometimes that’s wise if a blizzard is predicted.</p>

<p>Other than travel, snow is very charming, romantic and beautiful.</p>