I remember well. Even at 7, I walked to the bathroom on one of those smog days, down the covered but outdoor walkway and thinking “the air out here is the same as the air inside, so what’s the problem”? Looking back, I think I was on to something. We might have had air conditioners, but certainly not industrial strength ones with hepa filters.
But it was a good excuse for a game of Heads Up 7-Up.
In the Appalachias they put tire chains on the buses. Bus routes go up and down very steep back roads and residential streets.
I hear you: my dad lives in Indiana too. I’ve been watching the disappearance of even basic maintenance in that state for some time now.
Why do Republicans celebrate capitalism when it comes to paying a corporation for a product or service, but then think it’s evil to pay if the product or service comes from the government?
I’m not entirely sure what the logic is behind that set up. My speculation is that it’s a combination of
A) Consideration for workers who need to be home with their kids when school closes
B) Ease of use – how do we know if the daycare is closed or not due to bad weather? This makes finding out easy. They’re closed if school is closed.
The recent situation with five days closed in a month, however, has apparently led them to reconsider the policy. They’re figuring out a new one now.
When I lived in Alberta ('92-'93 timeframe), there was no such thing as closing school due to snow or cold. If the temperature dropped below -40 the LPG powered busses wouldn’t run (we had to use city busses instead of yellow busses for some reason), but you were still expected to come to school.
They don’t plow the streets their either. The snow is so dry that they just pour sand over it after big snowfalls and everybody just drives on the snow all winter. By the end of winter, our driveway was below street level because we shoveled it out when it snowed, and the sides of the driveway were lined with walls of packed snow.
Best snow days ever? Atlanta! Because, it only snows every 4-5 years, so none of the cities own any snow equipment. And because it’s very hilly. So, on the rare snow day, everything closes down, and you just stay home. But the best thing isn’t even the snow itself, because it seldom stays on the ground long enough to play in it. The tree limbs falling are actually a real threat. But it’'s the best ,because the local news crews know exactly where the inexperienced drivers will blow it, and plant themselves at the bottom of those hills for the slo-mo theatrics ahead. Which in turn means…best drinking game, ever! You can do rounds based on bets as to who will crash when they come down the hill, and doubles on which ones will make the news crew flip out and have to jump out of the way. I think all-time best goes to the numbnuts who not only crashed and scared the news crew, but also trashed a police cruiser parked (idiotically) at the bottom of the hill.
Do Toronto schools generally have school buses? What often happens in my more rural area is they cancel the buses but leave the school “open”. Which means it’s effectively closed but there’ll be a few teachers there to watch the kids who get dropped off or walk. They cancel the buses fairly often, but actually closing the school takes a big storm.
I’m not at all sure about this map. I’m from Montreal originally, which had (at least in my youth) the best snow removal I’ve seen in a major North American city. If you get a dump of a foot or more in a day or less, things close, because even the best-equipped snow removal fleets working through the storm can’t keep up, and drifting and whiteouts are enough to stop traffic. The largest snowfall I saw there, 21" during a storm in 1972, caused 7’ drifts in the streets, and things shut down for a good three days - the snow removal services couldn’t get their equipment out of the garage, and emergency services operated by Skidoo.
I recall trying to get to the dépanneur at the foot of the street to pick up some bread and milk on the 2nd day of that storm. I had to walk on top of the roadside snow banks (already 7’ high that year, and packed). I managed until about 4-5 houses down, where the foot of the drive was buried under an impassible drift, whereupon I turned around and headed home. The entire jaunt took over an hour. I got to the dépanneur the next day on cross-country skis.
We didn’t close for 10" snowstorms (of which we had plenty that year), but if the accumulation had been over two feet? Well, we’re a hardy lot, but not that hardy…
There has been a massive population boom and expansion of the suburbs/exurbs in the metro area since that time. Which has led to a tremendous amount of car commuting, as well as much more road surface area for the DOT to have to deal with cleaning up.
And, SUVs are a nightmare on highways in snow conditions. Sure, people can get going, but they can’t STOP. On the Front Range, snow also often comes with fairly windy conditions, and high-profile vehicles are even more vulnerable than little cars. (I lived there a total of 10 years in the mid-90s and 2000s, and I commuted all over the Front Range for various jobs.)
I’m from there myself and both my parents and my sister still live there.
AFAICT, the answer is something like “if you pay government workers to perform a service, it’s much harder for my buddies to make serious bank off of it.” See: the 50-year parking meter lease deal in Indianapolis, etc.
Very true about SUV’s but my point is, the local news makes such a big deal whenever it snows now compared to the 60’s and 70’s when it actually snowed more. And that they close the schools now at minimal snow amounts when they actually have the roads cleared compared to the 60’s/70’s when they didn’t clear the roads and just allowed the roads to become snow packed. 90% of the time when the news freaks out that the roads are bad, I find them to be just fine.
In the 60’s and 70’s, cars in Colorado were allowed to use chains in the winter. They were also heavier, on average, and had a lower-to-the-ground profile (better in wind). Those details make a huge difference.
I remember epic winters of the 60s and 70s because the streets on the biggest hills were blocked and we’d sled down the streets. I lived on a hill where we could sled two to three blocks and probably hit speeds of nearly 30 mph. I got to see a tow truck try to recover a car but ended up doing a high speed half block slide down the sidewalk before it slowed down by bouncing into the street and pinballing from curb to curb. but schools were open except under blizzard conditions.
Exactly. Most of Iowa is flat, but I grew up in Dubuque, which is incredibly hilly. Every street is a steep hill. As a result, Dubuque owns as much snow removal equipment as most of the rest of the cities in Iowa combined. I now live south of there in the Quad Cities metro area, and it takes far less snow here to cancel school than in Dubuque. The streets also take days to get cleared after a snow event, while in Dubuque, growing up, I seldom remember finding even a small side street not cleared four to six hours after a major snowfall.
True that. I have a cousin who grew up in California, and never drove on snow in her life. She married a guy she met in college and moved to Des Moines with him after college. It was years before she could drive on snow or ice. As a native Iowan, I’ve often marveled at the hilarity that ensues on the rare occasions they get snow, or worse yet ice, in Texas. Because they have no idea how to control the car when it slides…LOL
They’ll do the same thing here, cancel buses but keep schools open… But the percentage of kids who actually bus to school varies wildly from school to school (at the various schools I attended, any time the buses were cancelled but school wasn’t, classes were still mostly full, as the vast majority of kids walked).
That makes sense, I guess the thought of daycare closing for bad weather in general is completely foreign to me - it just never happens here (knock on wood). But then, the folks who run my daycare also have their kids in the daycare, so that certainly makes a big difference.
I don’t remember school ever being closed for cold. I do remember a handful of snow days, but I do also remember trudging to school in at least knee-high snow (the roads had been plowed, but the sidewalks not so much). Most municipalities have taken up a policy of plowing the sidewalks along the major walking routes to school, damn kids these days don’t know how lucky they have it 
Love the pic. Thing is, I learned to drive while living in the LA area. In LA, you drive or die - more freeways, longer commutes. For fun, a 4X and off-roading adventures all over the west.
Then, I traveled to Boston. And I thought that was the most incredibly scary place I had ever driven! (Mexico was actually better.) High speeds, hairpin turns at the exits, hardly any signage telling travelers where said hairpin turns are, until you arrive at full speed, with every hair on your body standing on end.
And then? Atlanta. OMG. Whutta nightmare. And that is in good weather! In LA, if you change lanes without signalling? Ticket. Multiple lanes in a single swipe? Ticket. If you want into a crowded lane? You wait for a break, because stopping and holding up traffic to let somebody in? Ticket. It flows. Atlanta, nope. If traffic gets stalled out, count on some jerk roaring up the emergency lane at 85 mph. If said jerk wants to pass on your right or changes 3 lanes at a swipe without signalling? No prob! Come to a dead stop on the freeway to let somebody on? How polite of you! I thought it was just a change in local customs - but not. But, there are no consistent rules, written or practiced, as the years revealed. You add even 1 inch of snow to that (or, God forbid, ice they can’t see!) and all hell breaks loose! Surprising few accidents, considering. I heard many theories over the years. Once I was settled as a local, I did as locals do, and stayed away from the freeways except at certain hours - and then, only as a matter of dire need. The ice got so crazy one year, there were just thousands and thousands of younger pines with their tops bent all the way to the ground for days. Freaky.
But still. With even a grain of common sense, you don’t really wait for anybody to officially close anything. You just stay home and wait for them to announce whether you are taking a vacation day or not, and whether you need to write notes for your kids the next school day, that’s about it.
The whole idea of a “snow day” seems so foreign to me. There’s no amount of snow or coldness that would close a school here in Finland.
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