Snow Days

The college closed down at 11:00 am yesterday. The policy is, if the region is expected to receive 7 inches or more of snow, the college closes. This is the third Tuesday in a row that the college has closed down early.

We received nine inches of snow yesterday. The previous Tuesday snow was not quite 7 inches, but they closed down at 2:30pm. The subsequent student escape and horrific traffic jams, complaints and bad press caused the college to close down early this time around.

I had the place to myself, worked until 6pm, got a lot of my own work done, had no problems with the roads getting home, and, honestly, I could handle about six more of these kinds of snow days with no distractions and annoyances.

Now, let's see if I've got the pattern down. Two years ago, we had blizzards. A year ago at this time we  had a scary twelve day stretch of 80 degrees. Now this year we have no snow throughout the winter, and then late snows that gets us back into normal precipitation for the season. Word is that the eastern Midwest has pretty much made up for the 2012 summer drought, and a bumper corn crop is expected this year.

This is reminds of a quote I heard about sub-Saharan Africa "We don't have seasons anymore. We just have drought and flood".

Well, those are seasons, I guess. I think that's where we in North America are headed as well. Except we will have freeze, thaw, flood, and drought.

Welcome to the new normal.