Posting from a winter wonderland....

[djonn]

Woke up this morning to a white world, with more snow falling.

Now, it does snow from time to time in Portland. But this particular snowstorm -- which hit, apparently, between 4:00 and 5:00 this morning -- took the entire metropolitan area by surprise; none of the weathercasters had predicted anything remotely as dramatic, and the morning radio team reported that they'd had dry, bare streets when they rolled into their studios at 3:30 AM or so.

This meant that the area's two largest school districts, Portland and Beaverton, were still running on "open, normal schedule" through much of the morning commute, and only at 7:30 and 8:30 AM, respectively, did they go on air and announce they'd be closing. (In both cases, many school buses were already on the road by the time things started to get dicey.) Perhaps not surprisingly, some parents called into the radio station sounding greatly aggrieved -- "How dare they put our children in danger!!!! We will besiege the School Board with our pitchforks and tar and feathers and blast the Superintendent!!!" [That paraphrase isn't nearly as far over the top as you probably think it is....]

While I sympathize with the frustrated parents, I can't really fault the school districts -- which had closed for a day a week or so ago during a weather non-event where forecasters had projected snow that didn't in fact show up. This time, the forecasters (as one of them admitted on the radio) were "gun-shy", had expected the relevant weather system to fall apart before it got here, and universally projected another non-event -- and the district decisionmakers, relying on those projections and the dry-at-four-in-the-morning streets, initially declared business as usual and sent out the first wave of buses.

Me? I suspect I'd best hit the Web and renew some books. Somehow, I don't think I'm going to get them back to the library today....

Comments

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

Realizing that if the school districts had been doing their jobs, they would have had someone out around 5am to check for this stuff. If there was *any* question, one check at 4am is not enough. Snow on the ground is hardly unheard of and heaven knows they've had scouts out at that hour up here for months now. Even if it's only the bus drivers or principals...

By 8:30 everyone at HS has been there for at least an hour (or more) and the danger is a moot point...

Bad S.D.!

As for the quote -- nope, not over the top. I've heard that before :>

[djonn]

Oh, they did have people out. But this one wasn't well-forecast, and whereas we started getting snow around 5, it didn't become apparent that things were going to be really bad for another hour or so after that.

To give another indication of just how badly we got surprised, the TriMet bus fleet didn't get chained up ahead of time, either, and that virtually never happens.

I would agree that the properly and normally cautious call would have been to call the closure much earlier. But I put at least as much blame on the weathercasting professionals as I do on school officials. This one they screwed up, badly, and the one on the radio this morning admitted it.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

nope, channel 8 at the 11pm news had something about 27 degrees and the possibility of snow and then they had this long montage of the city's de-icer trucks and a dude saying " there is plenty still on the streets"

yeah, not everyone is awake then either.

[darcyjavanne.livejournal.com]

My workplace didn't bother to announce closure until 8:45, by which time (given the U opens at 8:00) most of us were well on the way and/or there. Details in my LJ. Yeesh.