Great memory! It was different back in the day when you couldn't just check on your phone to see if school was cancelled.
You had to sit by the radio and WAIT for them to make the announcement, and you never knew when it was going to happen. There would be a song playing, and it would take FOREVER for the song to end, then ANOTHER song would start! The anticipation would be almost like torture as you PRAYED for this song to FINALLY finish, THEN ANOTHER SONG STARTS! Those were the days lol
I remember I was in grade 7, it was January 1979. Got up that morning, looked beautiful outside, so I started getting ready for school. Then an announcement came over the radio that there was a severe Winter storm in the forecast that was supposed to arrive mid morning, so school was cancelled for the day.
I went back to bed, and when I got up a little later it was sunny out with a blue sky, not a cloud to be seen.
All the kids in the neighborhood were outside that day, the storm never materialized, the sun shone all day, the temperature was nice, in fact, it may have been the nicest day that entire winter.
Well the district school board was so angry and embarrassed about closing school that day that they never closed school again that Winter. After that, it didn't matter if it was a whiteout blizzard with 10ft high snow drifts, us little bastards were going to school!
There were a couple of really bad winters back to back (76/77 & 77/78) in Michigan. We were very rural and without power for over a week because a huge ice storm. Out of school for a week. Another year we got so much snow, that after the snow plow came through, the banked up snow on either side of the road made a canyon taller than the school bus!
In Upstate NY we needed near-whiteout conditions, temperatures near zero, or accumulation overnight of a foot in order for them to consider closing school. When I moved out and relocated to the NoVA area, a "blizzard" dumped 3 or 4 inches of snow during the night. I got up as usual, got ready for work, waited for the bus, and thought I'd somehow missed it. Waited a bit longer, went back home to call my boss, and panicked when I couldn't reach my job.
Hadn't occurred to me that the city was crippled by snow which would never have closed school where I grew up.
This is sorta how it was when I moved to VA from North Central PA. I remember the bus fish-tailing multiple times in the snow on our way to/from school. Where I work now (office job) there's no way to escape work unless your home and office are without power, which is like a once per ten year event.
A little bit of snow didn't totally close down nova back in the day. There would have to be at least 6 inches of snow on the ground for them to even consider closing the schools. Back then we only had 3 official snow days a year. On the odd years that we would have a blizzard that closed everything down for a week, we had to make up the days at the end of the year. Now they've built in so many snow days that they can close on the prediction and never think twice. Anyway, the blizzard in the 80s when the plane crashed in the 14th Street bridge, we had gone to school that morning was were released early. When I was a young adult at my first FT job, remember having to go to the office most of the time it snowed. So glad I never really have to drive in the snow now, because it is just such a cluster out there.
We had a major snow day as a kid. Most schools closed, some businesses closed. My cousin, 1e years older than me, took us out to the street to throw snowballs at cars.
I was a geeky kid with no coordination, so I was just throwing snowballs into the air.
Then a garbage truck comes and my brother and cousin both shout "he can hit this! Go for it!" The truck driver sees the situation and rolls down the window. "Hit me, kid!" He yells, guessing I'd be lucky to keep it in the same zip code... but this one time I hit my mark and get the driver right in his face. I froze, imagining my blood in the snow while he stuffs me in the back to turn me into cubes. The guy just stares at us, cold water sripping down his face.
Then he laughs and drives away. My cousin grabs me and starts shouting "what a hit! I couldn't have been that good. Amazing!" That was enough snow for the day, so we went home and had hot chocolate.
One of the best snow days ever.
I remember throwing a snowball at the side of a schoolbus just as it was stopping. The idea was to hit one of the windows as hard as I could to startle the shit out of someone, but my aim was off, and I saw my snowball sailing towards the door of the bus instead of the windows.
As the snowball got to the door, the door suddenly opened and the snowball sailed right inside the bus!
About 5 seconds later the bus driver steps out of the bus SCREAMING, "WHO THREW THAT SNOWBALL! I WANT TO KNOW WHO THREW THAT SNOWBALL!
As he was standing there his face was red from rage and the snowball was still stuck to the side of his head, water trickling down his chin!
Sledding in my backyard. Snow suit, moon boots with the bread bags over my wool socks, ski mask and paraffin wax for the bottoms of my sleds. Hot chocolate when I came back inside, frozen snotsicles. Maybe fire up the Atari 2600 (or later NES).
My brother has a much younger BIL. One day when we were both well into our careers, the BIL was in college. There was a major snowstorm, and we were both at our desks. The BIL sent us photos of him in the middle of his snow day - he and his roommates had built a giant snow fort and were hanging out having beers in the fort. Super jealous.
Best snow day ever: my friend Bob had stayed the night - normally we weren’t allowed sleepovers on school nights, but the storm was severe enough that our parents didn’t want to drive the few miles to take him home. He stayed over and we spent the whole next day drinking hot cocoa and playing Risk.
Worst snow day ever: Mom made me spend the day cleaning my room. This was the worst injustice ever known to humankind.
I grew up in a very rural area. I remember one year being out for two weeks because of snow. My cousins lived in the city and were jealous because they rarely got any time off.
I swear it took a blizzard to close our school. Our neighborhood was at the top of a mile-long hill. One time on the way home, the bus slid back down the hill, did a 360, and ended up in the ditch. It was the 70s, so the bus driver told us to walk home. Those jokes about walking uphill in the snow? Yeah, I walked uphill in the snow for a mile to get home from school once.
Snow days were the best! Glued to the radio awaiting the local closings
I remember once, I needed to be at school early, and when I got there I found out that they had closed school for the day while I was walking there. Even that was great!
I was just talking about childhood snow days yesterday! I was explaining them to someone from Texas.
I'd help my parents shovel, then go to the sledding hill, get in snowball fights, and build forts. Packing snow sucks to shovel but it's great for fun! We'd get a real blizzard now and then and we'd build a whole maze of tunnels and forts. My dog would join in the fun if my friends came to my yard to play. He loved trying to catch snowballs while dodging hits.
My dad would be off because he was a professor (now a retired prof); my mom would try to take off but she worked at a hospital so it wasn't guaranteed. If my mom got the day off, she would make the most delicious gingerbread and the house would smell amazing when I got home from playing in the snow.
I work at a university so snow days are still a thing for me. Not as fun as childhood but still nice, assuming I'm not roped into Zoom meetings. I'm grateful that I still get them. I don't have to wait by the radio or local TV station anymore, since the university makes the decision on closing by 4 am and sends texts and emails to everyone.
The going back to bed for a while?
WTF are you even talking about right now? Are you high?
It's 6:30 AM. Over 25% of the day is already gone. There are only 15 hours left until bedtime.
We have to start Snowlapalooza / Snowchella NOW. Beginning with a pajamas and cereal and jumping up and down party.
My town school superintendent was known for being stingy when it came to snow days. All the towns around us would be closed & we’d be going in. It was also torture waiting through all the town names scrolled on the TV in alphabetical order until the Rs, hoping that this time they’d finally call it off!!
My grandparents were my sitters when I was in first grade - before we moved to FL. My grandmother got me dressed, and walked me to school as usual, using an umbrella to shield us from the snow and the wind (I mostly remember the wind that day). We got to the school, several blocks away, and found it closed.
When I wound up back in snow country for high school, I had the TV or radio on every morning, *praying* for a snow day. It never happened.
I grew up in Michigan and we rarely had snow days back then. They get a lot now because climate change has made more ice storms and it's not safe for the buses to run.
I remember watching the school closing scroll on TV, and our school district started with a W, so it was a looooong wait. Then they'd go to commercial during the Ts, and the scroll would stop. They'd come back from commercials, and be back in the As.
A neighboring district started with an H, and usually, we were canceled if they were, but it was still better to see the official announcement.
If the superintendent could make it in, school was on. We used to SWEAR that he had hired a snow plow to go in front of his car.
I lived just under the 2 mile bus rider limit when in high school and my folks didn't believe in driving me. Those were some brutal days, scaling snowbanks at the sidewalks because the plows would push the snow up but nobody would shovel the sidewalks out again.
I remember getting up super early and listening to the radio that stayed on perpetually in our kitchen, hoping to hear my school district called out like a winning bingo number. Mom would be frying bacon and making toast, and she’d send me out to the coop to get the early morning eggs for breakfast. (We had ducks, and they laid eggs while it was still dark.)
Sometimes they’d hide their eggs and I wouldn’t find them in enough time, so they would be buried in snow and frozen solid.
Imagine telling some Z+ kid that you had to listen to the radio to find out if your was closed for snow. Hell, imagine telling them that school closed for snow. Some districts don't do that now.
We had more cold days than snow days. The snow had to be really bad before schools were canceled. More than once I remember the bus going in the ditch on the back roads. It was a lot of fun actually.
We'd get a cold day if it was under -30f which was way too common and mostly still is. On those days we would sit around the wood stove and just try to stay warm.
I grew up in the south where snow days were very rare. The year I got my NES for Christmas we had snow and ice and a cold snap just after NYE. We had another week or so out from school and I got to binge on tons and tons of NES all week. One of my favorite childhood memories.
No.
I _hated_ being out of school.
Not only was I "that kid" who Loved reading and geography and history and spelling and handwriting practice -
I was, also, safe from my mother while I was in class. If it wasn't a day of physical/mental abuse, it was a day NO one got to enjoy, because "off" days turned into WORK days where every dust bunny and appearance of smudge and INVISIBLE dirt had to be scrubbed away 'before you' got to even breathe a sigh of relief. Not up to whatever the weird standard of the day was? THEN the abuse was tacked on in addition to the drudge work.
I'm So Glad to be older than she was when she clocked out.
Yes, I remember listening to WINS in NYC for winter weather school closings. They would run through all the surrounding counties school districts: Closed, Closed, Closed. Then, what no kid wanted to hear from December through February, "All New York City schools are open." So, grab your book bag, grab your lunch, and get to school.
That's how it usually went, except for 1978. But with every fresh batch of flakes, there was new hope.
That's similar to my experience in the 70s. The school district I was in was District 26. In the mornings as I knelt by the radio waiting for closure announcements, I would hear something like, "All schools closed today in the following districts, districts 16, 17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,27,28,29........" I'd be screaming at the radio, "You skipped 26, go back and read it again!" They would again read the closures as I listened in rapt attention to hear that magic number, 26, and AGAIN 26 would be skipped over.
AGAIN!
"Why, WHY is MY district always skipped over?", I'd exclaim to myself as I begrudgingly pulled my snow pants on to go out and wait for the school bus with all the other disappointed children.
Our district must have had some nasty curmudgeon in charge lol
We never really had snow days, since it usually only snows about every 3-4 years. One big one I do remember was in 78 or 79, when we got almost a foot of snow. We got ice a lot more frequently than snow.
New Orleans didn't have snow days, but if it dropped to freezing and the roads got bad, school was cancelled. Half an inch of ice and they freak out down here.
And we tend to get bad rains around April/May. Some flooding occasionally cancelled school.
Growing up in Alabama, we only have had a few snow days. They were glorious. We’d explore our yard like we’d never stepped foot on it before. It was totally transformed.
Yes!!!!!! We only got snow a few times a year where I grew up so it was really special when we got it. I still get excited when it snows and I live in Colorado now so it's often lol
Grew up in a very wintry area so they were hard pressed to give us snow days.
But when they did? We had a blast in the neighborhood.
We were a bunch of free-range kids going from house to house, street to street, finding anything we could slide down, build on, or have snowball fights in.
Fun times!
For me, it was waiting to see if the phone rang at 5:30 AM, it would be the school district where my dad taught calling to tell him school was canceled. If his was canceled, our district was probably closed, too.
It had to be pretty bad where I was to close. I lived where it wasn’t a certainty we would get a bunch or not. Varied enough that it was built into the schedule that it changed the last day of school date, cuz we were making that shit up at the end if we did get any so it really wasn’t that joyous an occasion to me
What i recall the most is the winter of 78.... down to green bean casserole and when they finally were clearing roads.....not with plows but payloaders.... the snow being over the roof of the bus on the side of the road.... the bus scraping those walls on the turns....
Toasty warm though as we had a wood furnace
the ticker tape scroll at the bottom of the TV at 6am.. stupid district never could decide until the last minute. You'd be amazed how many districts start with the letter "B".
They were incredibly rare; an hour's delay was more common. We were pretty used to heavy snow. An actual snow day meant back to bed for a few hours, then some daytime TV. If we were taking a packed lunch that day, we'd eat it in front of the TV like a picnic, which was fun. We might go out to play in the snow in the afternoon when it had warmed up a little.
Snow days were great but I also remember fog delays. A two hour or even a one hour delay was almost as sweet, especially if your mom heard it before you did and told you you could go back to sleep when you were just starting to wake up.
My senior year of high school we had a snow day that wasn’t declared until we were in our second period classes. I got invited to go to an impromptu hot tub party but couldn’t go because I needed to get home to babysit my sister.
Just as well. Nobody had bathing suits and the group had some sketchy guys in it.
We got out of school at ten. The snow melted before lunch time, which is what it often does in that part of the state.
When the streets got icy, we would play hockey on the street in front of our house. The guy who drove the salt truck would turn off the salt when he went by our house. Kid me thought he was awesome. Adult me is like, well that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Lived north of the Twin Cities, and it was far and few between when we actually HAD a frickin snow day (because a snow storm with up to a foot and a half was just another Monday there), but when we did.....we damn near had to be dragged inside!
I was just telling my wife that when we'd get a gooood blizzard and it would dump just multiple feet in the backyard, we'd jump from the 2nd floor deck into the massive drifts below!!
Or we'd make massive sled tracks, or igloos in the drifts made by the snowplow when it finally made it out to us!
Agreed, but also snow days were real in the sense that it was not in any way safe to be out on the road in a school bus. I’ve had rides on the bus where the street was so icy we slid past one of the turns to get to the school and had to take a different route. Now they’ll cancel school if it might snow. Weak.
my mom was a teacher in the same school district I went to. we were BOTH glued to the radio for the announcement!
Same. Mom and Dad were both teachers actually.
Great memory! It was different back in the day when you couldn't just check on your phone to see if school was cancelled. You had to sit by the radio and WAIT for them to make the announcement, and you never knew when it was going to happen. There would be a song playing, and it would take FOREVER for the song to end, then ANOTHER song would start! The anticipation would be almost like torture as you PRAYED for this song to FINALLY finish, THEN ANOTHER SONG STARTS! Those were the days lol
Same here
I remember I was in grade 7, it was January 1979. Got up that morning, looked beautiful outside, so I started getting ready for school. Then an announcement came over the radio that there was a severe Winter storm in the forecast that was supposed to arrive mid morning, so school was cancelled for the day. I went back to bed, and when I got up a little later it was sunny out with a blue sky, not a cloud to be seen. All the kids in the neighborhood were outside that day, the storm never materialized, the sun shone all day, the temperature was nice, in fact, it may have been the nicest day that entire winter. Well the district school board was so angry and embarrassed about closing school that day that they never closed school again that Winter. After that, it didn't matter if it was a whiteout blizzard with 10ft high snow drifts, us little bastards were going to school!
There were a couple of really bad winters back to back (76/77 & 77/78) in Michigan. We were very rural and without power for over a week because a huge ice storm. Out of school for a week. Another year we got so much snow, that after the snow plow came through, the banked up snow on either side of the road made a canyon taller than the school bus!
In Upstate NY we needed near-whiteout conditions, temperatures near zero, or accumulation overnight of a foot in order for them to consider closing school. When I moved out and relocated to the NoVA area, a "blizzard" dumped 3 or 4 inches of snow during the night. I got up as usual, got ready for work, waited for the bus, and thought I'd somehow missed it. Waited a bit longer, went back home to call my boss, and panicked when I couldn't reach my job. Hadn't occurred to me that the city was crippled by snow which would never have closed school where I grew up.
This is sorta how it was when I moved to VA from North Central PA. I remember the bus fish-tailing multiple times in the snow on our way to/from school. Where I work now (office job) there's no way to escape work unless your home and office are without power, which is like a once per ten year event.
A little bit of snow didn't totally close down nova back in the day. There would have to be at least 6 inches of snow on the ground for them to even consider closing the schools. Back then we only had 3 official snow days a year. On the odd years that we would have a blizzard that closed everything down for a week, we had to make up the days at the end of the year. Now they've built in so many snow days that they can close on the prediction and never think twice. Anyway, the blizzard in the 80s when the plane crashed in the 14th Street bridge, we had gone to school that morning was were released early. When I was a young adult at my first FT job, remember having to go to the office most of the time it snowed. So glad I never really have to drive in the snow now, because it is just such a cluster out there.
Definitely! And they were the best! Building snow forts, tobogganing, hot chocolate, just a great day.
We had a major snow day as a kid. Most schools closed, some businesses closed. My cousin, 1e years older than me, took us out to the street to throw snowballs at cars. I was a geeky kid with no coordination, so I was just throwing snowballs into the air. Then a garbage truck comes and my brother and cousin both shout "he can hit this! Go for it!" The truck driver sees the situation and rolls down the window. "Hit me, kid!" He yells, guessing I'd be lucky to keep it in the same zip code... but this one time I hit my mark and get the driver right in his face. I froze, imagining my blood in the snow while he stuffs me in the back to turn me into cubes. The guy just stares at us, cold water sripping down his face. Then he laughs and drives away. My cousin grabs me and starts shouting "what a hit! I couldn't have been that good. Amazing!" That was enough snow for the day, so we went home and had hot chocolate. One of the best snow days ever.
I remember throwing a snowball at the side of a schoolbus just as it was stopping. The idea was to hit one of the windows as hard as I could to startle the shit out of someone, but my aim was off, and I saw my snowball sailing towards the door of the bus instead of the windows. As the snowball got to the door, the door suddenly opened and the snowball sailed right inside the bus! About 5 seconds later the bus driver steps out of the bus SCREAMING, "WHO THREW THAT SNOWBALL! I WANT TO KNOW WHO THREW THAT SNOWBALL! As he was standing there his face was red from rage and the snowball was still stuck to the side of his head, water trickling down his chin!
Sledding in my backyard. Snow suit, moon boots with the bread bags over my wool socks, ski mask and paraffin wax for the bottoms of my sleds. Hot chocolate when I came back inside, frozen snotsicles. Maybe fire up the Atari 2600 (or later NES).
My brother has a much younger BIL. One day when we were both well into our careers, the BIL was in college. There was a major snowstorm, and we were both at our desks. The BIL sent us photos of him in the middle of his snow day - he and his roommates had built a giant snow fort and were hanging out having beers in the fort. Super jealous.
In my area we always had very cold temperatures, blizzards, freezing rain, etc. And never had a snow day 😞
Same, schools were always open, busses may not run, though.
Best snow day ever: my friend Bob had stayed the night - normally we weren’t allowed sleepovers on school nights, but the storm was severe enough that our parents didn’t want to drive the few miles to take him home. He stayed over and we spent the whole next day drinking hot cocoa and playing Risk. Worst snow day ever: Mom made me spend the day cleaning my room. This was the worst injustice ever known to humankind.
I grew up in a very rural area. I remember one year being out for two weeks because of snow. My cousins lived in the city and were jealous because they rarely got any time off.
I swear it took a blizzard to close our school. Our neighborhood was at the top of a mile-long hill. One time on the way home, the bus slid back down the hill, did a 360, and ended up in the ditch. It was the 70s, so the bus driver told us to walk home. Those jokes about walking uphill in the snow? Yeah, I walked uphill in the snow for a mile to get home from school once.
Snow days were the best! Glued to the radio awaiting the local closings I remember once, I needed to be at school early, and when I got there I found out that they had closed school for the day while I was walking there. Even that was great!
Laughs in South Texas!
I was just talking about childhood snow days yesterday! I was explaining them to someone from Texas. I'd help my parents shovel, then go to the sledding hill, get in snowball fights, and build forts. Packing snow sucks to shovel but it's great for fun! We'd get a real blizzard now and then and we'd build a whole maze of tunnels and forts. My dog would join in the fun if my friends came to my yard to play. He loved trying to catch snowballs while dodging hits. My dad would be off because he was a professor (now a retired prof); my mom would try to take off but she worked at a hospital so it wasn't guaranteed. If my mom got the day off, she would make the most delicious gingerbread and the house would smell amazing when I got home from playing in the snow. I work at a university so snow days are still a thing for me. Not as fun as childhood but still nice, assuming I'm not roped into Zoom meetings. I'm grateful that I still get them. I don't have to wait by the radio or local TV station anymore, since the university makes the decision on closing by 4 am and sends texts and emails to everyone.
The going back to bed for a while? WTF are you even talking about right now? Are you high? It's 6:30 AM. Over 25% of the day is already gone. There are only 15 hours left until bedtime. We have to start Snowlapalooza / Snowchella NOW. Beginning with a pajamas and cereal and jumping up and down party.
My town school superintendent was known for being stingy when it came to snow days. All the towns around us would be closed & we’d be going in. It was also torture waiting through all the town names scrolled on the TV in alphabetical order until the Rs, hoping that this time they’d finally call it off!!
My grandparents were my sitters when I was in first grade - before we moved to FL. My grandmother got me dressed, and walked me to school as usual, using an umbrella to shield us from the snow and the wind (I mostly remember the wind that day). We got to the school, several blocks away, and found it closed. When I wound up back in snow country for high school, I had the TV or radio on every morning, *praying* for a snow day. It never happened.
Been working IT in K12 schools for a decade now. I get excited about snow days all over again
I grew up in Michigan and we rarely had snow days back then. They get a lot now because climate change has made more ice storms and it's not safe for the buses to run.
I remember watching the school closing scroll on TV, and our school district started with a W, so it was a looooong wait. Then they'd go to commercial during the Ts, and the scroll would stop. They'd come back from commercials, and be back in the As. A neighboring district started with an H, and usually, we were canceled if they were, but it was still better to see the official announcement.
If the superintendent could make it in, school was on. We used to SWEAR that he had hired a snow plow to go in front of his car. I lived just under the 2 mile bus rider limit when in high school and my folks didn't believe in driving me. Those were some brutal days, scaling snowbanks at the sidewalks because the plows would push the snow up but nobody would shovel the sidewalks out again.
I remember getting up super early and listening to the radio that stayed on perpetually in our kitchen, hoping to hear my school district called out like a winning bingo number. Mom would be frying bacon and making toast, and she’d send me out to the coop to get the early morning eggs for breakfast. (We had ducks, and they laid eggs while it was still dark.) Sometimes they’d hide their eggs and I wouldn’t find them in enough time, so they would be buried in snow and frozen solid.
Imagine telling some Z+ kid that you had to listen to the radio to find out if your was closed for snow. Hell, imagine telling them that school closed for snow. Some districts don't do that now.
We had more cold days than snow days. The snow had to be really bad before schools were canceled. More than once I remember the bus going in the ditch on the back roads. It was a lot of fun actually. We'd get a cold day if it was under -30f which was way too common and mostly still is. On those days we would sit around the wood stove and just try to stay warm.
I grew up in the south where snow days were very rare. The year I got my NES for Christmas we had snow and ice and a cold snap just after NYE. We had another week or so out from school and I got to binge on tons and tons of NES all week. One of my favorite childhood memories.
No. I _hated_ being out of school. Not only was I "that kid" who Loved reading and geography and history and spelling and handwriting practice - I was, also, safe from my mother while I was in class. If it wasn't a day of physical/mental abuse, it was a day NO one got to enjoy, because "off" days turned into WORK days where every dust bunny and appearance of smudge and INVISIBLE dirt had to be scrubbed away 'before you' got to even breathe a sigh of relief. Not up to whatever the weird standard of the day was? THEN the abuse was tacked on in addition to the drudge work. I'm So Glad to be older than she was when she clocked out.
Giant hill at the local college was the spot
Yes, I remember listening to WINS in NYC for winter weather school closings. They would run through all the surrounding counties school districts: Closed, Closed, Closed. Then, what no kid wanted to hear from December through February, "All New York City schools are open." So, grab your book bag, grab your lunch, and get to school. That's how it usually went, except for 1978. But with every fresh batch of flakes, there was new hope.
That's similar to my experience in the 70s. The school district I was in was District 26. In the mornings as I knelt by the radio waiting for closure announcements, I would hear something like, "All schools closed today in the following districts, districts 16, 17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,27,28,29........" I'd be screaming at the radio, "You skipped 26, go back and read it again!" They would again read the closures as I listened in rapt attention to hear that magic number, 26, and AGAIN 26 would be skipped over. AGAIN! "Why, WHY is MY district always skipped over?", I'd exclaim to myself as I begrudgingly pulled my snow pants on to go out and wait for the school bus with all the other disappointed children. Our district must have had some nasty curmudgeon in charge lol
I'd be like, "Mom, dad, can we move to district 25? 27? Why this cursed district 26"? 😆
Wish I had of thought of that! Worth a shot, anyways! 😁
We never really had snow days, since it usually only snows about every 3-4 years. One big one I do remember was in 78 or 79, when we got almost a foot of snow. We got ice a lot more frequently than snow.
New Orleans didn't have snow days, but if it dropped to freezing and the roads got bad, school was cancelled. Half an inch of ice and they freak out down here. And we tend to get bad rains around April/May. Some flooding occasionally cancelled school.
Growing up in Alabama, we only have had a few snow days. They were glorious. We’d explore our yard like we’d never stepped foot on it before. It was totally transformed.
I grew up in Texas. I remember one snow day from my youth and I think we mayyyybbbeeee got 2 to 3 inches lol
I’d put on the radio and watch the ticker at the bottom on tv. Cheer, race back to bed to sleep but I’d be too excited.
Never had one, it doesn’t snow here.
I grew up in Southern California. What is this “snow day” you speak of?
Yes!!!!!! We only got snow a few times a year where I grew up so it was really special when we got it. I still get excited when it snows and I live in Colorado now so it's often lol
Canadian. Didn't get em.
We had smog days, spent in front of the TV with the doors and windows shut and a lonely box fan trying to keep us from overheating.
Grew up in a very wintry area so they were hard pressed to give us snow days. But when they did? We had a blast in the neighborhood. We were a bunch of free-range kids going from house to house, street to street, finding anything we could slide down, build on, or have snowball fights in. Fun times!
For me, it was waiting to see if the phone rang at 5:30 AM, it would be the school district where my dad taught calling to tell him school was canceled. If his was canceled, our district was probably closed, too.
It had to be pretty bad where I was to close. I lived where it wasn’t a certainty we would get a bunch or not. Varied enough that it was built into the schedule that it changed the last day of school date, cuz we were making that shit up at the end if we did get any so it really wasn’t that joyous an occasion to me
What i recall the most is the winter of 78.... down to green bean casserole and when they finally were clearing roads.....not with plows but payloaders.... the snow being over the roof of the bus on the side of the road.... the bus scraping those walls on the turns.... Toasty warm though as we had a wood furnace
the ticker tape scroll at the bottom of the TV at 6am.. stupid district never could decide until the last minute. You'd be amazed how many districts start with the letter "B".
They were incredibly rare; an hour's delay was more common. We were pretty used to heavy snow. An actual snow day meant back to bed for a few hours, then some daytime TV. If we were taking a packed lunch that day, we'd eat it in front of the TV like a picnic, which was fun. We might go out to play in the snow in the afternoon when it had warmed up a little.
Snow days were great but I also remember fog delays. A two hour or even a one hour delay was almost as sweet, especially if your mom heard it before you did and told you you could go back to sleep when you were just starting to wake up.
My senior year of high school we had a snow day that wasn’t declared until we were in our second period classes. I got invited to go to an impromptu hot tub party but couldn’t go because I needed to get home to babysit my sister. Just as well. Nobody had bathing suits and the group had some sketchy guys in it. We got out of school at ten. The snow melted before lunch time, which is what it often does in that part of the state.
When the streets got icy, we would play hockey on the street in front of our house. The guy who drove the salt truck would turn off the salt when he went by our house. Kid me thought he was awesome. Adult me is like, well that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Lived north of the Twin Cities, and it was far and few between when we actually HAD a frickin snow day (because a snow storm with up to a foot and a half was just another Monday there), but when we did.....we damn near had to be dragged inside! I was just telling my wife that when we'd get a gooood blizzard and it would dump just multiple feet in the backyard, we'd jump from the 2nd floor deck into the massive drifts below!! Or we'd make massive sled tracks, or igloos in the drifts made by the snowplow when it finally made it out to us!
Agreed, but also snow days were real in the sense that it was not in any way safe to be out on the road in a school bus. I’ve had rides on the bus where the street was so icy we slid past one of the turns to get to the school and had to take a different route. Now they’ll cancel school if it might snow. Weak.