I have a weird situation in my county: I live in suburbia, but most of the county is semi-rural and there’s apparently some kind of natural climate line along I-95*. Go west of it, and rain will often start turning to snow. But they make the decision to shut down schools on the county levels, so my kids are used to seeing snow on the ground and assuming that there’s a two hour delay. Today they just… closed school completely, and the rain washed it all away by noon.
I ain’t that happy about this. I mean, the kids were fine, but: I had things to do today, man. Maybe they should try salting the damn back roads more?
Moe Lane
PS: A bit early, too. Normally we get stuff like this happening after Christmas. I mean, it’s not even technically winter yet.
*This is probably wrong and I’m just imagining it and I still think that that’s what’s happening.
You may not be wrong, nor imagining it. Maybe it’s far enough in-shore that ocean impacts are minimal, or maybe that’s where the off-shore and on-shore climate collide. Weather has some funny patterns sometimes.
We routinely watch nasty thunderstorms smack the town two towns east of us (about 10 miles) during Thunderstorm Season. It’s consistent, and I don’t know why – it’s not like there are any significant land features to funnel the weather at that particular town.
Not to wag excessively greenie, but .. I-95 also creates a “wall” of hot, humid air (exhaust) that’ll tend to rise and disrupt – a little bit – the weather above it.
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Mew
There’s a certain sadistic joy in late start days.
You wake the kids up for school two hours late. And they’re confused. They ask “Why are you waking us up so late?”
You say, “”The school called…” and you see hope rising in their eyes. Then you finish, “school is starting late today. You need to get ready. Be happy! You got to sleep in!”.
.
“If you’d get up without me having to bounce you out of bed, you could have spent the time playing in the snow.” Is a bit gratuitous for my taste, but still tempting.
That assumes the call arrives early enough ..
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The more sadistic is .. get up early, get the kids up, dressed, normal morning stresses .. *then* get the call.
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All the anxiety, and then two hours of filling time.
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Mew
Microclimate is a very real thing, and rationalizing observations often requires asspullium.
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In Idaho, the North side of the Snake River Canyon consistently got twice as much snow as the South side. Regardlessof whether the jet stream was coming from the West or South Southwest. (Northwest just brought cold. Southwest, the basin and range had already torn out the bellies of the clouds.) But rain was about even. Go fig.
Here in Indiana, I’m convinced the weather station has “South of I-70” set up as a macro. (And if they don’t, they darned well should! It’s in pretty much every report of inclement weather.)