What On Earth Is A Snowday

[Deleted member 27340]

@Kas_Can_Fly Oh wow. Winter tyres is an absolute need here, if you don't change from summer to winter tyres you're screwed and won't get anywhere.

Oh and we use spikes on the tyres because chances the roads are actually clear are really low, thus chances of damaging the roads are lower too.

People with bigger pickups or 4runners often use chains instead of winter tyres because that's simpler and cheaper.

 

[Eleanor]

Upstate New York has the worst weather ever without a doubt. San Diego, however, is an entirely different story. Perfect.

But I once heard a weather person on tv in San Diego say "Stay in if you can, people, its wet out there!" BWAHAHAHAHA

They closed South Dakota for weather a year or two ago. They shut down the interstates and everything. They have serious winter storms. We were driving to the airport in Iowa a couple of years ago, it was 6 below zero or something (Farenheit) and we saw, in a 40 mile drive, no fewer than seven vehicles off the road on their sides from the night before - they didn't get the road closed quite fast enough that time. I drove very conservatively, let me tell you!

I absolutely loved snow days as a kid in MA.

 

[nursenurse]

Okay, guys, I have you beat. I live and work in the snow belts known as Canada. Most snow days mean something. Like a two foot fall over night with ice below. However, I do remember my daughter's school bus to high school being cancelled once in anticipation of "The BiG One.". Not a single flake fell overnight or the next day that had been cancelled. When I was a kid back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we went to school no matter how cold and how snowy the days were. I think we raised a generation of wusses. Mind you, we all walked to school, perish the thought nowadays!!!!

 

[nursenurse]

Ignore my little Guatemala flag. I am in the airport after a medical mission.

 

[KwanYingirl]

I worked 40 hour weekends at a Boston hospital. I always got there so early, I snagged the only free parking place on Brookline Ave right in front of the main entrance. So my car would just sit there sat-mon. One Saturday we had a blizzard. No one made it in to work, but all the frigging sick people decided to come to the ER. We were swamped. I was doc months pregnant. When my work was done Monday I went out to discover my car was COMPLETELY buried in snow. Not one person came to the aid of the pregnant woman chiseling out of the snow. It never dawned on me to move my car into the parking garage. But in my defense, I was doing four people's job for 16 hours and pregnant.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

@nursenurse, LOL, but SOOOOO true! I walked to school every day back in the 80's but nowadays its pretty comical how all the mommies in their SUV's line up to drive their kids home. One school nearby is *directly* across the street from a nice "development" type neighborhood. All the cars line up at the end of the day at the edge of the development so that the kids can be driven home, maybe what amounts to a block or two away at most! Maybe nowadays its considered abusive to make your kids walk home? No wonder we have an obesity epidemic, when simple forms of exercise aren't encouraged.

 

[Eleanor]

It is not sympathy for the kids. It is paranoia on the part of the moms. They don't trust that it is safe for their kids to walk home. At least that is what it is where I live. You grow up with a constant barrage of newspaper stories about child abductions and kids getting hit by cars, and pulled off of public busses and... Most people don't believe in statistics and ... in any case aren't willing to take the risk.

@KwanYingirl - How awful! But not really surprising - if your car got buried on my street in Allston and you got out while people were still digging out, everybody would help out - but if you didn't get started til later... you were on your own. :-(

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Uhm this is in a very nice neighborhood, not the ghetto! Mommies ARE paranoid and they're raising a generation that won't be able to do anything for themselves. Thank God my parents gave me freedom at a young age. These kids won't know what to do when they turn 18!

 

[catjudo]

I can agree that mommies are paranoid to a degree and the helicopter mom is perhaps doing a disservice to their child. However, even very nice neighborhoods have pedophiles living in them. And I'm not sure what the rules are where you live, but I think it's pretty standard in most places that there is no bus service for kids that live within a two mile radius of the school. I am someone who lives in one of those very nice neighborhoods in a very nice area of our city with a school right in front of the neighborhood. These neighborhoods can be much larger than they appear from the outside. Even if my daughter did attend that public school, I would not let her walk to school and home by herself. I would be that mom sitting in a car line to drop her off and pick her up (oh, but skip the SUV and insert my Prius ;)).

I do let my daughter play outside by herself. She's allowed to ride her bike, scooter, etc on the sidewalk/street in front of our home. But she has to stay on our street. Our neighborhood is too large and quite frankly anything could happen to her.

Back in the 70's, when I was a kid, someone made a serious attempt to kidnap me. I was very fortunate that my grandfather found me just moments before the person would have gotten away with me. I have absolutely no reason to believe that my daughter would be any safer in 2014 than I was in the 70's.

 

[Eleanor]

I live in small town (albeit an extremely spread out on - minimum lot size = 1/2 acre) in a county with more cows than people. Mostly people up here are ranchers, cops, firefighters and builders. We are the opposite of ghetto. In defense of my neighbors... Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped from South Lake Tahoe (resort town) way back when, a bigger place than here to be sure, but close enough (and I know a bunch of people who live here who grew up there.) The odds are small for stranger abduction - but not small enough. Plus we have coyotes and the odd mountain lion. Off chances? Yes. The turkeys, however, are ubiquitous and a large flock is quite intimidating if you are less than five feet tall. If you've ever been in the middle of three or four full grown turkeys as an adult, you know what I mean. Think "small dinosaurs." ;) And bus service here costs.

Our kids play outside a lot when they are little - on our property or our friends' properties - which are fenced - with the (big) dogs out with them. When they are bigger they still have to take a dog.

 

[KwanYingirl]

I drove my children to school because we lived a half mile down a lonely dirt road. To take the bus, they
d be on it for 45 minutes each way, then walk home. Too long to be confined and barely supervised.

 

[Little Flower]

In southern US a forecast of snow means the schools will be closed.
A " snow day" in my childhood meant we were out of school and spent every minute playing in it. We didnt have boots or parkas any more that people in the desert would have surfboards. They still have snow days. They're figured into the school year. Just in case.
Two years ago we had a few inches of ice and snow and I had to walk mile 1/2 to get home. The wrecks were everywhere. Having lived further north (south Carolina) I just parked my car in a safe place. It's absolutely crazy if it snows. I love it