How much snow is required for a "snow day" in the midwest U.S. and Canada?

Factual Questions
41

I grew up in central British Columbia and school was rarely canceled due to snow. And we would get A LOT.

The city has a huge capacity for snow removal, with a massive team of front-end loaders, graders, snow plows, and many dozens of dump trucks running a bucket brigade off the snow blowers which are basically front-end loaders fitted with blowing units the size of a car.

The removal process would continue through the night and by morning main streets would be open, allowing the city to function and kids to go to school.

The city itself is laid out to accommodate this process, with extra-wide lanes to accommodate the two-metre berms of snow that run down the centre of the street during the process.

The annual snow removal budget is millions of dollars for a city of 80,000. I assume this system is typical of most Canadian cities.

But when I lived in Victoria, BC, a city of 350,000 with a very mild climate, I remember the city being shut down after a one-foot snowfall. The snow wasn’t removed before everyone drove on it and compressed it into an icy sheet. The daily melting and freezing process furthered the effect, creating a city-wide skating rink. The city didn’t have the equipment to deal with the situation and nobody had the proper tires on their vehicle and if they had they lacked the skill to drive on the ice anyway.

Stores were closed, city buses stopped running, the whole city effectively shut right down. I found it pretty amusing.

42

When I lived in NC for a couple of years, some people were asking about the weather in the northeast. Another transplanted Yankee and I talked about it sometimes being too cold to snow and the southerners had never heard of such a thing. And everything shut down for a couple of inches of snow, which in the 2 years I was in Raleigh, only happened once or twice.

43

Quite true. In outstate Minnesota, we sometimes had schools close early when it wasn’t even snowing at all. If the wind starts blowing the snow around, it can create impassible drifts across the roads in just a couple hours, even without it snowing any more.

But that was closing early. It always happened at 1:15 pm – apparently because if classes went past 1pm, it couonted as a full day to the state Dept of Education. What usually happened was a loudspeaker announcement around 12:30, just after lunch, that the rural buses would be leaving at 1:15 because of blowing & drifting snow. So rural kids were let out then to get on the buses, but town kids had to stay until 3:30 – what a rip! (We got a ride to school with my father instead of riding the bus 3 or 4 days a week. But on any snow day like this, we left at 1:15 and rode the bus home!)

44

The Boston area encountered a mega-problem a couple of years ago with a snow storm that hit mid-morning. Businesses dismissed all of their employees at about the same time and it jammed the roads so badly that many people never made it home that night at all. Snow plows could not get through and plenty of people ran out of gas blocking all the major highways. Lots of people had to abandon their cars. Luckily, I just gave my boss the finger and just walked out to pick up my young daughters very early on. My wife didn’t make it home until 10 am the next morning. The Boston area is working on policies to make sure that hundreds of thousands of people aren’t dumped on the street at the same time during an emergency.

45

Call me a cynic, but there is one other factor–whether any neighboring schools have closed.

Imagine you’re a superintendent that hasn’t called off school while even one relatively close school district did. Further imagine that one of your buses has an accident that day–even one not caused by snow, wind, or cold. Further imagine you are now testifying in a civil suit brought by the parents of one of the children on that bus, and you are asked about your decision not to call off school.

Lawyer: “But (neighboring community) thought the weather was bad enough to call of school, didn’t it. Why didn’t you?”

Superintendent: “Well, I didn’t think it was bad enough to call school off, obviously.”

Lawyer: “You were apparently wrong, weren’t you. No further questions.”

Let me be clear, though. Even though I agree that school is called off more often these days than it was in the 50’s and 60’s (I grew up in small town Minnesota, so I’m familiar with the issue), I’m not trying make the case that school superintendents are all wimps these days. It’s that the financial and insurance consequences are much worse these days than they were then, and superintendents have to take that into account. Or lose their jobs.

46

I live in the ‘snow belt’ of southern Ontario. (which comprises the strip of land between two great lakes seeing lake effect snow from either side.) We see lots of snow and more than a few 'snow days.

Hereabouts there are days when the schools close, due to weather, but the city effectively still runs.

When we have ‘snow days’ everything shuts down, including the university and city hall, followed by the rest of the city.

Usually it’s because so much snow is falling, so fast, that it can’t be cleared. The entire city snow removal budget could be completely blown out on a single 3-4 day storm. The drill is; stay in if you can, check on your neighbours and relatives, dig out any fire hydrants and spend the day digging out your car and driveway.

47

When I damn well decide there’s no school, there is no school. Myself, and one assistant superintendent basically make the decision, inform the Boss what we think, he seldom overrules us, then makes the official call. Parents and employees are notified by a bulk phone call/e-mail system within about 5 minutes.

Sort of, as Harmonious Discord (and several others) have pointed out, there’s no one set standard most of the time. Our procedure here (western Chicago suburb) starts with the night before and keeping a close eye on whatever is headed our way. At around 3 AM, I’ll start peeking out the window, checking radar on the laptop, and calling the local street departments to see what they think.

Probably about 4 if it seems like I’d better go take a look around, I get in the car and do some driving around. We have a lot of roads in the district - I’m out in my two wheel drive sedan trying to stay alive, along with two other administrators in their cars doing the same thing.

The simple standard comes down to this: If, in our collective infinite wisdom, it’s not going to be safe for kids to either walk TO school, for us to drive a bus, parents to drive a car, or kids to stand at a bus stop for any reason, including extreme cold there will not be school.

That sounds simplistic, and it probably is, but setting a specific number of inches, or hard standard leaves a lot of room for error - because for example - 6 inches of dry fluffy snow, with light wind, is a lot different than 6 inches of wet, freezing, drifting ice. If it rained, then snows and freezes, that’s the worst - a layer of snow, covering up a sheet of ice.

In the last five years I’ve been here, that’s only happened at most - twice a year. Once, we got everyone to school (against MY judgment - impending ice storm), and the Boss decided at 9, to send everyone back home - an operation complicated by us setting up Command & Control to make sure we knew which houses had parents at home, and which didn’t. Frigging nightmare.

48

I’m from Edmonton, and I can’t remember any “snow days” where school was entirely cancelled (I attended elementary school in the mid- to late-1980s).

If the temperature was below minus 20 celsius then we had “indoor recess” so kids wouldn’t get frostbite. I vaguely remember once or twice when there must have been a ton of snow so not all the teachers and kids made it to the school that day - instead of regularly classes we all played games in the gym and went to the library and whatnot. School was never entirely cancelled, and they kept the building open for any kids who showed up. FWIW, I don’t think any kids at my school took a school bus to get there. Either they lived near enough to walk or their parents drove them (or carpooled). In junior high and high school, kids took public transportation but there were very few yellow school buses.

In areas where they do completely cancel school, what do parents do if the kid already went to school on the bus or the parents dropped them off on the way to work? Are the parents required to take the day off work and come get them? Do the kids just have to fend for themselves and hopefully find somewhere to go?

49

Saskatchewanian here, and my experience matches Spoons, Gorsnak and Waenara. I only remember one snow day, in the sense of an official decision to close the school. It was a major blizzard, but PiperDad said that school would be open. He drove me there, at about 10 mph, because visibility was so poor. He couldn’t drop me off at the school itself because of a drift at the intersection, so he told me to wade through the snow and go in. It was hard to see the school because of the blowing snow, even though it was less than a quarter block away, and I couldn’t even see the hospital in the next block. I had to wade through the snowbanks, with the snow blowing in my face and bloody cold, to find that the door was locked. Then repeat the process in reverse, to get back into PiperCar. PiperDad said, “Huh. I guess they closed today” and drove me home.

But that’s the only one I remember.

I think they’re more open nowadays to declaring snow days, but even then the schools in my area stay open, with a skeleton staff, in case any kids don’t get the message and turn up anyway. Last thing they want is to have little frozen waifs found in the snow the next day.

I think we didn’t get indoor recess unless it was 30 below F, with windchill added on. 20 below was just too common to call an indoor recess. 30 below on a still day, and I think they booted us out to get some fresh air.

50

I was talking once to a guy from South Carolina who moved here to Saskatchewan. He said that the first day snow fell, his little girl said, “Daddy, it’s snowing! No school today!”

He had to look at her and tell her the facts of life: “Honey, I don’t think it works that way up here.”

51

Eskimos don’t have snow days.

52

I went to school in Winnipeg during the 70s and 80s.

I don’t believe there was any criteria for cancelling school due to weather. Not coincidentally, school was never cancelled due to weather. Of course, there were no school buses in my school district either. We all walked or took public transportation.

The only time I can recall school being outright cancelled in Winnipeg was during blizzards. Not just any run of the mill blizzard, but epic days long blizzards that literally shut down the city of all movement. Multi day blizzards that left 3+ feet of snow on the ground. The type of which I’ve seen twice in my 40 years in Winnipeg.

Temperature? I recall walking a mile to school in -40. Traction? Not a consideration.

That’s not to say weather is not respected by we prairie dwellers. Indeed, there is a great deal of precaution that goes into living in this climate. It is well understood that one does not venture out of town in blizzard conditions. Even in good visibility, cell phones, survival kits and appropriate clothing are part of your kit.

And we watch out for each other. Got your car stuck in a rut in the snow? Car stopped along the side of the highway in the dead of winter? Someone will stop and help push or see if they can help out. Not because they are typical do-gooders, but because that’s what you do.