Snow days in Columbus, OH are an absolute farce.
I’ve certainly Twittered about this in the past, and this probably will not be the last time I complain about it. Today, nearly every school in the Greater Columbus area is closed.
Last night, you’d have thought we were living in New Orleans the day before Katrina hit. “Winter Storm Warnings” and “Weather Advisories” were all I could find on the television (when I wasn’t completely glued to LOST.) But yet, this morning, the roads were clear, and my driveway had just a little snow on it.
I had to pick up a book from the library today. So I went out. The roads are DRY. There are a million cars on the roads. The mall looked like tomorrow was Christmas.
How is this a snow day?
Maybe my memory is spotty, but I recall snow days in Cleveland when I was a kid. Snow days shut down the city. Snow days meant your parents weren’t going to work…not because they had to watch you, but because their office was closed as well. Snow days always meant tons of time to play in the snow, because there was 6-10 inches of the stuff.
I’ve always been confused by Columbus’s policy of the “2-hour delay.” FOG causes a 2-hour delay. Heavy rain causes a 2-hour delay. This means working parents have to miss even more of their workday because…
1) School bus drivers can’t drive in the fog/rain?
2) Lawyers love a good “schoolchildren injured by weather” lawsuit?
3) Superintendents just don’t feel like working on gloomy days?
I can’t think of a good reason to postpone school and interrupt everyone’s lives for FOG?
But back to today’s rant: Why today is a snow day. It’s raining here in Columbus. Most of the snow is melting. So why is school closed? Why was the city in a panic last night?
Why do we base so many of our daily decisions on the ramblings of a guy that’s right about 40% of the time? Lewis Black said it best: “In Latin, meteorologist means LIAR. Al Roker was the weather man in NYC, and three years ago we had a blizzard. We were supposed to have, according to Al, 4 to 12 inches of snow. That’s his prediction. We had 36 inches. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he was 2 feet off. That’s not even in the ballpark. If you were a roofer and you built a roof and it was two feet off, you’d still be serving time. Al Roker makes 1.5 million dollars a year as a weather person and he doesn’t know sh** about the weather.”
JEFF BLANKENBURG 
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