For the curious, makes you wonder why they are so reliant on one plant, but I guess you don’t expect that plant to fail during a time of unprecedented demand.
I think our dogs would start a rebellion in the house at those temps. They shiver and act reluctant here if it goes below 30. We have coats for them, it helps a little I guess.
It took a real Old Testament, this is what would have happened if Eygpt was in the upper latitudes storm to shut down things in MT when I was growing up. I can recall the schools only shutting down once in the late 80s when it was -40, before the windchill. At -10 below and lower they just kept us in during recess.
It never got that cold when I was a kid, but yeah, I don’t remember ever being closed due to temperature. We just went to school and had to stay inside all day if it was single digits or below.
Schools here have been closed the entire week, I don’t recall ever getting more than maybe two days off in a row. If they think us Millenials are bad, just wait until this pampered generation grows up!
I wonder if the kids go to school fewer days, too. The GF’s daugher, a high-school senior, has been getting something like 11 days off in a row for spring break. We got a M-F week off and that was it.
They seem to schedule teacher’s meetings on Fridays before a three-day weekend which turns it into a four-day weekend. I’m pretty sure the teacher’s meetings are basically a boondoggle. I talked to a teacher who admitted as much. Come in, eat some donuts, meet for an hour or two, and go home.
I don’t really care. I’m just surprised at how often this kid seems to be off school.
He said something similar, things rarely shut down, if ever. I mean, if you grow up used to that I can see the frame of reference. But I can also see where a place like Chicago grinds to a halt if it doesn’t happen nearly as often there.
Shit man, I grew up in Louisiana. If it looked like it might even possibly snow, they’d shut everything down. And then everyone headed to the grocery stores and picked the shelves clean.
Indeed. -40 is seriously cold, but if you’re living in an area where this can happen any given year, you have the gear to mitigate it.
It’s weird to see how seriously (or not) certain regions plan for this. When I was in Tulsa, an inch of snow was enough to bring that city to a halt, yet it’s not a place that is foreign to the concept of snow. It happened every year I was living there.
I think the general push in education has been to shorten the summer break and spread those lost days off out during the school year. Lots of studies about how much kids forget during summer break.
Some of it is if the city will invest in trucks to plow and salt to combat the snow. We have them here in St. Louis so we do ok with snow. I mean, we still have accidents, but the roads get improved pretty quickly.
We do seem to get less snow than we used to, so we probably have a new crop of drivers who don’t have a lot of experience driving in it.
I just want to mention that at -40 you would need some pretty serious gear to mitigate it. And while it has happened maybe 3 times while I have been alive, regular folk rarely carries gear to mitigate -40 in the continental US.
The idea with closing down schools is that you can reasonably expect a kid to have to wait outside (in the rural areas) for the bus for 10 mins or so at max. And when you have temps that frostbite can set in at 5-10 mins, you don’t risk kid’s health if you can.
I mean, it is dangerously cold out there. -10, -15 schools are open. -20 to -30, it gets difficult to justify the risk of a kid getting hurt. I can remember twice schools closing for cold, 2014, 2019. (I wasn’t in school for the 80’s one)
I phrased that poorly. Having gear that deals with “common cold” (you always have some stretch of below at least -10 in MT) goes a long way in dealing a serious (but short) cold snap.
This is true, breaking out the long underwear, scarf and heavy gloves for this one. Even with all of our typical cold weather gear helps with -40 (it only got to -25 last night) but not enough to make it too much safer, and public schools can’t expect all of the kids to have parents that invest in the correct warm weather gear.
I was surprised the local schools closed, but it is also surprisingly cold out right now.
Let’s all be thankful for one thing right now with the polar vortex, it’s been bone dry, thank god. It could have been much worse.
True dat. No ice on the roads here. Just cold as balls for 2 days, not a big deal.
Damn son, that’s cold! Glad to hear nothing froze or broke overnight. Hope it gets warmer for you soon.
Here it was -9 this morning, but the wind chill died down so it was -15, which was supposedly better than yesterday morning. Hard to tell when you’re running between house, car, parking garage and work as quickly as possible. My college kid had to go back today, no classes cancelled, but my high school kid is still home, and will likely be tomorrow as well if we get the snow they’re forecasting for late tonight and into tomorrow morning.
The crazy thing is that it’s supposed to be 55 here on Sunday, and 60+ on Monday! That would be a 70 degree temperature swing in under 5 days. I’m just glad it’s going to be above freezing and no snow for Saturday and Sunday, as I have to drive to Muncie, Indiana for a volleyball tournament and the last 90 minutes of the 2.5 hour drive is all one-lane rural highway.
I got the day (and maybe weekend too) off work because some pipes broke. Hopefully the computers and network are okay since we’re pretty much crippled without them.
Morning classes were still running though. It was only -2°.
Somebody on this board, maybe 3-4 years ago, linked a wonderful deal that a supplier of military cold weather gear was having, basically dumping old stock. I picked up an amazing coat made for Arctic conditions made to military specs for like $50.
I’m sorry I don’t remember who posted that, but if you are reading this, THANKS! from Troy NY.
I believe that was in the Hardware bargain thread. I think I tried to order too, but got an error message for the one I wanted.
Edit: It was Telefrog.