I work for County Government WAY high up in the Colorado mountains. We are surrounded by ski areas. We get a shit load of snow and are prepared to deal with it. In 26 years we have closed twice for snow. It’s gotta be a SERIOUS situation. One of those times it was the county manager that called it without consulting the board of commissioners. Got in a bit of hot water.
The other time the two highways in the county where shut down by the state. So there really wasn’t much choice.
I have made the call twice on my own where I just needed hours to plow out just to get my vehicles moved out of the driveway. And then there is the issue of the road I live on. We are the only full time residents, so we are the last to get plowed. I can do it myself, and often do, but am cautious about it because I don’t want it to become a full time job (and it beats the heck out of my truck).
I live in what’s called the ‘snow belt’, positioned with Great Lakes to the North and South, some winters we see a LOT of snow.
Rural schools close most often, due to buses being unable to safely transport students to and from.
But most frequently a snow day occurs when so much snow falls that the plows can’t keep up. So they wait. For it to stop, then start up again. For such extreme weather events typically the whole city closes down. No buses, banks, factories, social services, the uni and college and all schools. So effectively everybody gets a free day.
At such times people are instructed to check on the neighbours, take care shovelling, dig out fire plugs and mailboxes!
In it’s own way it’s kinda wonderful, you can’t shop or go to events so everyone has a ‘hang around with your family’ day. You can feel everybody pulling together, clearing the elderly neighbours drive, checking up on each other.
School children, of course, adore them and are always pulling for storms to get bad enough to cause Snow Days.
I’ve been a store cashier for five years now. Since I take the bus, they are very understanding if I don’t come in on snow days. We also open late and/or close early if it’s really bad.
I work at a college. We have an alert system in place. It’s primarily for the students, but employees are mentioned.
If things are minor (depending on how much snow and when it fell), we come in as normal, though most supervisors will cut you slack if you’re a little late.
If it’s heavier snow (but not enough to close the college), they may cancel early classes. Faculty/staff will be told to report when they can.
Very heavy snow will close the school.
There is usually a list of school closings. One particular school closes at the first sign of snow, but it’s in a high elevation and the main roads go along the side of a mountain. :eek:
But this is the Northeast. There are fleets of snowplows and tons of salt ready for any storm.
At my old factory job, we had two different levels of snow days. At the first declared level, the plant was open and and operations continued as best as we could but attendance was voluntary. If, IYHO, the roads were sufficiently unsafe that you didn’t want to risk it, you called in and got a bonus, unpaid day off. At a level 2 snow emergency, the plant was just closed. Stay home and drink something warm.
Level 1 days were pretty common. We probably could count on 3-5 of them every winter. I only saw a handful of level two day in eighteen years of working there. The exception was a major icestorm in 2006 that knocked out all power to the town for nearly a month. That was a cold, poor January.
I’m also at a university, in the Midwest. We can get quite a bit of snow, but the University closes for snow relatively rarely. It’s not unusual for all of the local elementary and high schools to be closed, but the University to remain open.
If the weather is such that we cannot make it to work, we can call in and use vacation time for the day. In those rare instances where the University does close due to weather, “essential personnel” are still expected to report. As it happens, I am not considered essential.
Our department has a calling tree, so if we are closed for snow, I will get a phone call early in the morning, hopefully before I have left for work, letting me know that I don’t have to come in. In turn, I will call the people who report to me and let them know. So we don’t have to watch the list of closings on TV, waiting for the University to scroll by.
If you happened to be already scheduled for a vacation day on a day when the university is closed for weather, too bad for you. You still have to take that day out of your pool of vacation time. The logic being that you were already planning to be out anyway, so your absence obviously had nothing to do with the snow.
I think McGill closes for snow maybe once every ten years and it is announced on the radio and then I had no obligation to go to my office obviously. I guess if school was open but for some reason you couldn’t get there, you phoned in and a colleague would substitute. But that was totally informal.
In the twenty plus years working for the county government, we have not been closed. The courts, also located in our building, have closed, but my office has not.
Prior to working here, I worked for an ophthalmic lab. A blizzard closed everything down, city/county/state closed. The main freeway through Minneapolis was closed. But not us! We were informed that the labs in other parts of the country weren’t closed, so we were required to remain open. My mom had to pick up my daughter from daycare. Left work at 430, got to their house 10 miles away after 7pm.
The lab manager lived over 30 miles away.
Within the week, protocol changed.
On a snow day I telemark and alpine ski one road over. If the hill is not open, I cross-country ski one road over. If both are closed, I side-country ski at the end of the road at an abandoned x-c/lift area. Getting into the city usually isn’t a problem (lifted 4x4, studded snows), for my street runs off of the Blues Highway 61 which is high on the plow priority list, but If I figure that clients will be digging out rather than attending, I reschedule their appointments. The work still has to get done, only it gets done on further extended work days.
This is from 25 years ago when I worked in a place where it snowed, and before email. Our place closed during bad snow. There was supposedly a number you could call to see if it was closed, but that was unreliable. The local radio station would read snow closings. Our places, being AT&T were named with alphabet soup, and the announcers would frequently crack up reading the names.
The tricky part was not snow in the night but snow in the day. Our management often dawdled on the decision to close so we were stuck driving back in the brunt of the storm.
Everyone got paid (we were all salaried) but here is the downside of a snow day. Since we used paper forms, when we had a snow day I had to sign the snow day form for everyone on my team, which tired my hand out when I had 16 people working for me. I’m sure it is much easier now.
I work for a commercial landscape company so, by the time it’s snowing, we’re probably slow anyway. I still come into work but no one cares if I’m late (my commute is an hour to begin with). If it ever snowed a ridiculous amount overnight and I couldn’t get out, I wouldn’t get any static for missing a day.
The owner only preemptively called a snow day once and, of course, the amount of snow was overhyped. So I don’t see him doing that again.
I work for a municipal government, and the party line is that they don’t do snow days, but in reality I suspect most non-essential people just take PTO or telecommute/work from home on that one day a year when we get snow or ice around here.
I’m a DC-area Federal government worker, so it’s more or less whatever OPM says.
Sometimes the government is closed, sometimes we get a mixture of delayed opening/unscheduled leave/unscheduled telework.
IIRC, telework policies vary between agencies. At my agency, if you telework at all, then you’re expected to telework when the government is closed, so a snow day isn’t a day off.
For the first time in my life, I’m teleworking on a regular basis, so that would apply to me. But if the government and schools are closed, and the Firebug wants to do stuff in the snow, I’ll take leave for part of the day so I can do stuff with him.
Public Safety, so no snow days. If it gets real bad, we get the folks hotel rooms. I have also gone and picked people up who had small cars or large hills.
Public school, Southern California. Enough snow to close school would be a Sign of the Apocalypse, so there isn’t any procedure in the books. Fire, OTOH…we’ve closed and evacuated the campus several times in the 32 years I’ve taught here.
