A Lake Effect Snow Day

A Welcome Relief

These last two weeks have been one wild adventure in commuting after another. Snow. Ice. Torrential rains. Flooding. Dense fog. Tuesday the temps approached 60°F, whereas last Wednesday started at 0°F and got all the way up to 19°F. Yesterday it was still above 50°F at midnight, in the mid-40s by morning and snowing by evening.

The big concern for today, the last day of January 2013, was the layer of ice under the sideways blowing snow. Naturally I had scheduled Friday as Exam 1 Day. The new wrinkle this year? Instructors are no longer allowed to cancel classes. That decision has to be made at higher pay grades.

But at 6:10am I turned on the TV and Channel 3 was doing the Kalamazoo County school closings. Kalamazoo Valley Community College was closed for the second time this week -- they are just outside of town in a really exposed, isolated site. But above that line was Just In: Western Michigan University CLOSED. So I booted the computer and started updating webpages.



I probably could've gotten to K-zoo okay -- MDOT seems to have done a bang up job, so to speak, in drying off the freeways by morning. But I'm assuming that the regular streets and roads down south were all bad. It's not great here, but I think it was worse last week.

Adventures in driving indeed. Snow Day. Western never closes. (grin)

Dr. Phil

White Out

Baby, It's Warm Inside

Outside? It's been snowing horizontally all damn day. Early this morning the snow was very fine, almost dry in the cold 20s air. Flakes have been much bigger for the last couple of hours, coupled with the horizontalness of the snowing, makes for a pretty scene, one I won't even try to photograph. So we seem to be in a pretty heavy persistent lake effect snow band.

Other than trying to drive through it, I love the Great Lakes.

Dr. Phil