Hi Cinnamon! I’m over here in Durham having a snow day too and I so well remember the day of very little snow and TOTAL GRIDLOCK (to be fair there was ice too).
Tip to government officials, maybe don’t dismiss all government employees and schools at the same moment. Some children ended up having to spend the night at school because their parents couldn’t get to them through the traffic jams!
In the New Orleans metro area, any snow accumulation – even as little as 1/2" – will lead to wholesale road closures. Schools would absolutely shut down. However, the accumulated snow events in my lifetime seemed to be fortuitously timed so as not to close school:
Sometime in the winter of 1972-73: I was a toddler, can’t remember 
December 22nd, 1989: Happened during school holidays.
Christmas Day, 2004: Happened on a holiday. Interstates and most bridges were closed for about 24 hours.
December 11th, 2008: Freak snow event, was not predicted in advance. The snow came and went, no real accumulation.
Christmas 1964 was also a White Christmas in New Orleans, with snowfall of about 4".
I consider Virginia squarely in “the North” from our Gulf-of-Mexico vantage point 
I’d have figured that was well far north enough to have a regular snowy winter every year.
Tennessee seems to get plenty of snow – is that only the Smokey Mountains and the eastern half of the state in general? I assumed Kentucy winters were similar to those of it’s neighboring states (West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois).
I live in Islamabad, Pakistan, a City which gets snow uncommonly. We are 1 hour from Murree, which gets meters of Snow. As a result of that while Islamabad does not have the best infrastructure for dealing with snow, Murree does. So when snow is expected, you have all the ploughs, and trucks dispatched to Islamabad. 5 times out of 6 no snow.
I never remember school being canceled. Ever.
Seattle doesn’t get a lot of snow?
We’re pretty average for snow days here in Western PA, although when I was in high school, our superintendent was an ass who lived in another school district, and went by THEIR schedule. If they had school, so did we – even if our roads were covered in snow. As long as their roads were clear – and they had better roads, being one of the rich districts. The districts nearer to us would have the day off, and despite sharing some roads, we’d still be there. Jackass. (He was never very popular around here, for various reasons. At least he’s retired.)
But my sophmore year we were hit with a TON of snow – it started in October (my friend and I went for our last year of trick or treating and we were walking through snow drifts!), and didn’t clear up until April, I think. So he was forced to close school.
There’s snow right now, but so far no closings yet. Not like last year’s Snowmagedddon. I’m hoping we’ll have a white Christmas.
(Am I the only one who, if watching the morning news, still watches for my old school and does a little “yes!” if I happen to see it? Just for nostalgia’s sake.)
When I was in school we had a string of pretty mild winters but in elementary school we had snow days, but not often. That was in southern New York. My son has experienced school closings for anticipated snow.
There are a few differences between his experience and mine that I think play into it. In my time, if they closed school early we just went home. If my mom wasn’t home I went to a neighbor’s house, but we didn’t need an action plan on file with the school the way my son’s school requires.
Another big difference is that my school district included 3 elementary schools and one Jr/Sr High School (7-12). Nowwe’re in Maryland and all of Baltimore County is one district. It includes 169 schools. Coordinating the transportation has got to be a nightmare. Often when I hear that school is cancelled, or closing early with nothing happening I assume that there’s actual weather happening further out in the county.
Our municipalities really aren’t prepared for significant snowfall. We’ve been here for six years. We’ve had lingering snowfalls each year, but natives tell me all the time that this is not usual. Plowing happens very slowly. Last year when we had over four feet in the space of a few days it really did shut down pretty much everything for close to a week. Besides not having lots of plows, there isn’t the manpower or budget for the kind of cleanup I was used to when I lived in NY or Connecticut.
Louisville - and everything is relative, right? Louisville got almost no snow compared to Minneapolis from 1974-1977 when I lived there.
Lived in Indianapolis as a kid as well. And relatively - no snow. What shut down Indianapolis or Kentucky when I was a kid is a “dusting” in Minnesota.
No kidding. Learn something new every day. I’ve always thought everything north of the Arkansas-Missouri line was basically the Yukon in the winter
But seriously – aren’t there ski resorts in Tennessee?
EDIT: Link to a Gatlinburg, TN, ski resort. Maybe it’s the altitude :shrug: … I’m pretty sure Memphis is not a snow town.
You want to cancel as soon as you are sure–canceling the night before means mom can arrange for grandma to watch the kids or whatever. Canceling in the morning of means a lot of 6 year olds left at home with orders to stay inside. Sometimes it’s unavoidable–you can’t cancel school each time there is a 25% chance of snow. But if you are 99% sure you are going to be snowed in, it’s best to go ahead and call it.
I’ve never had school canceled because of snow. I went to private boarding schools in the UK, where if it did snow enough to cause difficulties the boarders were expected to go to class anyway, and state schools in Florida, where obviously it just ain’t in the cards.
I did experience a hurricane day, which was announced a few days in advance.
I lived in the big city growing up. There were virtually no kids who bussed in and no one lived more than a kilometer from the school (or you would go to the other school down the street). We all walked. There were no snow days. Sometimes all the teachers wouldn’t make it but we would just combine classes. (In fact, many of the teachers walked to school, too.)
I am sick of them canceling at the mere thought of it. Last time it was just below freezing and windy, and there wasn’t even snow in the forecast and they canceled it! A better system would be if the bus drivers can make it to the bus garage. If they can’t, then no school today!
Seattle and Portland don’t get snow hardly at all. The reason being is the trade-winds come up from the equator all warm and fuzzy, pick up a bunch of ice cold arctic water from the southward currents off the coast, and dump it all as drizzle nine months out of the year. It’s pretty steady weather, if not a bit monotonous. So yes, when it snows here, the plows are just overwhelmed and most people don’t know how to drive in it. I grew up in a mountain town, I know all about how to drive in the snow. The worst snow I’ve ever seen here was two years ago. It’d snowed 6" in the city, 18" out in Gresham and even more the higher up you went. We had that snow for a month. Tire chains were bordering on extortion prices.
I’m pretty sure this is a completely accurate memory from my childhood:
When I was young there had to be actual snow on the ground before they canceled school and it had to be a significant amount. This was back in the day of rear-wheel drive cars with standard bias tires. Now they cancel at the prediction of snow.
If it does snow then the counties are quick to invoke DEFCON 5 with promises of arresting people who drive on the road. Give me a frickin break. Sadly, the ability to drive in the snow seems to be a lost art. People with vehicles that are exponentially better in the snow than the cars of the 60’s are not just getting them stuck but flipping them over.
I live in Virginia too but have lived in the mid-west, the snow in the two places is different. When you get 4 inches (of snow) in the mid-west you have 4 inches of snow on the ground for a while. In Virginia you have 4 inches of snow for one day, then it melts and refreezes so you have about a half inch of solid ice on everything. The temperatures in Virginia like to hover just at freezing so that we get lots slush and rain freezing into ice then thawing.
Here in St. Louis a couple inches the night before is usually enough to cancel school. Growing up in New Hampshire, it had to be actually falling during the morning commute at a significant enough rate to stay ahead of the plows to get the day off (and then you might just get a two hour delay). The blizzard of '93 dropped up to three feet in some places on a Saturday night, and we had school on Monday.
Last year we had two snow days in a row; the first for about four inches of snow, the second for sub-zero wind chill. Canceling school for cold would have been unfathomable growing up.
I’m not that distressed that they canceled school this morning for ice; it was very slick last night and people are not prepared to deal with those kinds of conditions around here.
Yep, growing up in New England and living later in Chicago, school was rarely closed unless there was at least 6 inches of heavy snow. Even then, it would depend on when it fell – heavy snow at pre-dawn might mean cancellation but heavy snow at 4pm would be clear by the next day.
But living in Tennessee (where they use little salt and no sand on the roads) they’re quick to pull the trigger. I remember one time my wife (who was a teacher) had the day off because of a snow forecast and the next day was sunny and beautiful. I made fun of her but she had the last laugh, a free day off on a pretty day in the middle of the week.
Yeah, you pretty much cross that line and get six feet on November first…
It looks like Gatlinburg is about 1800 ft. above sea level. Louisville looks like its about 460ft. The Twin Cities are around 700 ft.
If the temperatures are reasonable, you can make snow. We can ski in Minnesota before the snow falls - once it falls and melts - and after it melts - until the temperatures get too warm all day/night. Maintaining snow in a shaded valley with snow machines is a whole different thing than “does it stick on blacktop.”
I grew up in Northern California, in the Bay Area. Snow is extraordinarily uncommon around there. It did snow one day in 2002. Despite the snow being only a very thin layer than began melting as soon as the sun rose, they did cancel school. I think it had less to do with poor conditions (the snow didn’t really adversely affect the roads at all) and more to do with “omg it fucking snowed! We can’t make the kids go to school! Let’s go build a snowman!!!”
On the flip side, never once had class canceled for weather when I was in grad school in Michigan.
While teaching in Bulgaria, we lost a week at one point to icy roads. They don’t salt the roads there and the buses couldn’t travel between the villages.
