Monday, February 28, 2011

Just Can't Win With the Weather

So after the winter we've had (and I'm not sure it's all done yet), we've actually managed to go two full weeks of school without a snow day.  I know, pretty amazing, eh?  And, truth be told, it's been almost spring-like.

However, spring-like warm weather can often bring spring-like bad storms.  Nothing like a warm front and a cold front banging up against each other and producing thunderstorms and those lovely little things known as tornadoes.  We've already had the tornado sirens go off twice in the past week and it's still February.  Fortunately these have happened while we were at home, not during school, so it simply means hustling all the felines into the basement and  hunkering down until the storm passes (praying the whole time that we don't have any damage).  I must admit that the felines are not happy with these little interludes and spend most of the time in their kennels (so we don't have to chase them all over the basement during the storm) glaring at us with That Look of Complete Disdain that only cats can give.

Anyhow, all the weather sources were predicting A Really Bad Line of Storms coming through our areastarting last night and going into today.  Oh fun.  Usually that means little sleep between the storm, the sirens and the cats bouncing all over the place.  However, the sirens went off yesterday (while Mrs. Eagle and I were returning from Girls Night at the Hockey Game) and I missed that fun.  It settled down a bit and didn't get bad again until around 5:00 am this morning.

And then it just let loose.  Thunder, lightning and buckets of rain, not to mention lots and lots of wind (no tornado warnings, however, Thank Goodness.)  So I'm sitting there drinking my coffee and watching the weather as large yellow, green and orange blobs sailed through the map right over our town when the phone rang.

At 5:15 am.  What the heck?

It was, surprisingly enough, the School District.  Apparently they took a look outside, took a look at the radar and decided a two-hour delay was a good thing.  Good decision.  It was a mess,  a rainy, stormy, windy mess.  (Oh, and the temperature was 70 when I woke up, was 58 an hour later, and now is 38.)

Now, a two-hour delay means the kids have a delay but all the employees report at their normal time.  I didn't have to much trouble getting in, but a few teachers who live in some of the more rural areas, really had some issues.  The rivers in town are rising (almost as bad as last' year's 100 Year Flood, but thankfully, not quite) and it was raining so hard that the streets were having trouble draining.

But we made it through.  The good news is this counts for a full day.  The bad news is I'm hoping and praying that I get everything taught that I need to before The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Tests in April and I'm not feeling really confident about it.

2 comments:

TeacherFromTN said...

I'm on the eastern side of the state, so we started with the fun stuff around lunch time. I'm in a portable this year, so we were called inside around 12:45--right in the middle of a great math lesson. We had to go into another third grade class, which made 42 kids--pretty crowded conditions. We went into a tornado "drill" due to a warning that lasted about fifteen minutes. After that, we just gave up and watched PBS for the rest of the afternoon. They never even let us go back to the trailer to gather backpacks, jackets, etc. LOTS of flooding here this afternoon--one middle school had staff and students trapped for a while due to rising waters! Everyone was released by about 5:30. Crazy weather for FEBRUARY!

Mrs. Bluebird said...

@Teach, my Dad lives towards the Eastern part of the state and said it was pretty wicked over there - and they had a school that had the access roads flooded as well! Nuts!