Blizzards and Other Weird Weather Patterns

I grew up in New York City, Bayside, and went to NYC public schools until high school, and yes, I recall -- fondly, as it happens -- very few snow days.

New York City has a history of actively trying to avoid closing schools. ABC 7 asked Farina today for more clarification on the decision to keep schools open. A big part of the decision, she said, comes down to the fact that if schools are closed, many children don't eat.

"If people can go to work, then kids can go to school," she said. "Many of our kids don't get a hot lunch and, in many cases breakfast, unless they go to school. So it's still a parent's decision whether they send their kids to school or not. My decision is where the kids are safest and the most taken care of, and the answer to that is in schools."

Bold in original, but, duh.

NYC is, as it happens, mostly prepared to handle lots of snow. Snow doesn't much bother the subway, for instance. And despite the perpetual gripes about plowing (a hallowed NYC tradition), the streets do get cleared, by and large, though my dad just called and grouchily observed that in his outer borough holdfast lots of street-parked cars, including his, are buried by precipiation and plow-walls.

Except for the worst blizzards, you can usually get somewhere in NYC even if it's snowing heavily.

Now that I'm living in the Rural Hellhole high atop Liberal Mountain, the kids have lots of snow days. It's actually sort of a pain in the ass for parents with jobs, because the job may be open, but you have nowhere to park your little ones. We have the sort of job where we have flexibility, but that is not remotely the case for most people up here.