Snow day

For a wonder, WWU is actually closed today. WWU is famous for being one of the only schools to be open when everything else is closed. They closed last year right after thanksgiving break because the twelve inches of snow we received Saturday and Sunday closed Bellingham up tight. People in the office were marvelling at that, since the last snow-day was in the 90's.

At the time, I heard the reason WWU stays open is that such a large percentage of our students and faculty live within walking distance of campus, so dangerous road conditions aren't the concern it is for your average K-12. In fact, last Friday was another instance of everyone but WWU being closed. I'm not sure what happened over the weekend to push us over into snow-day.

Myself? I've been snowbound since Wednesday. The hilly neighborhood I'm in has very bad hills, and are impassible without tire-chains. In fact, the number of SUVs at the bottom of either hill (the third is so obviously evil no one tries it when weather gets bad) is testament to the need for some kind of traction device, not just 4wd.

Since Tuesday night, I have had 15 inches of snow fall on my driveway. And more is falling right now. What we've had is a very cold mass of air parked overhead, as we get the usual stream of moisture. So we've received a heck of a lot of snow that would otherwise have fallen as hard rain. If the air were warmer, the amount of water falling from the sky would be normal for this time of year. But due to the cold air, it's falling as snow.

Yeah. Snow day today.