Snow Day

Southernman wrote:

I'm enjoying reading all your comments, not enjoying anyone in a bad predicament, but am interested to know what temperature it is outside after the snow - basically how bloody cold it is ?
The snow that the UK got last month wasn't anywhere near your blizzard depths (not speaking for the northern Europe guys) but it was the constant sub-zero temperatures, including wind chill, that kept the place frozen for so long and made road travel a lot worse for a lot longer than it probably should have been. As an indication the average temperature for December in our part of England (and we didn't get as much snow as most places) was 0.9 degrees.

This weather is fairly typical for New England. It's in the 20's F, and will probably stay there for the rest of the month.

We usually get hit with at least one big storm a year. This is more snow in a shorter period of time than is common, but once we get more than 8" dumped on us, it doesn't really matter. We just wait for it to stop and then the fleets of plows come out and clear it away. The difference between a smaller storm and a bigger storm two days later is just the height of the snow piled up on the sides of the roads. They are predicting that everything will pretty much be good to go by tomorrow mornings commute, although the schools will probably have a delayed opening as it will take some time to dig out all the school buses, and possibly the the doors the buildings if we get a lot of drift.

Southernman wrote:

Another question - could be quite interestingin comparision with the more socialist European countries - do you get paid for 'snow' days ?

It depends upon your employment agreement or contract, who you work for, whether you are are an hourly employee or on salary, union or non-union, and whether it's a state emergency shut down or not. For example, if you work for the public schools, and are a member of the Teachers Union, your contract is to work a certain number of days a year. A certain number of snow days are usually built into the year, but if they are exceeded additional days get added to the end of the school year. I'm on salary with a large company. When our offices officially shut down, it means I get a day off with pay, but a day off is no excuse for not meeting deadlines or getting critical work done, so I may end up making up those hours later on down the road to catch up, which is why I did some work from home today, even though I officially was not required to do so. Hourly, non-union workers tend to get the bone. They get paid for the number of hours they work. No work = no pay.

So far I've spent most of my snow day printing out new Arkham Horror player aids and laminating them with my cool new laminator. I want to laminate some more stuff.