Cold Days Vs Snow Days

By: Maddy Ehrlich

The frigid air bites at your fingertips as you walk out of school, hurriedly racing to get home as fast as possible before the temperatures drop further. Each breath sends a cold piercing through your chest, and the air fogs up in front of your mouth with each breath you release. Finally, when the sun is just about to set, a precursor for the freezingness that would escape with the disappearance of sunlight, you make it home. Looking at your phone before bed, the sad reality is that despite the temperatures reaching the single digits during the night and into the next day, there will be no snow to accompany this unbearable cold. However, the next morning, as you pull yourself out of bed and reluctantly head downstairs for the school day, you are met with the bright, bold letters on your TV: school has been canceled. Yet, looking outside the window, there is no snow, cars driving past your house as easily as if it was a summer day. As the temperature drops, the question raises- is the possibility of “cold days” feasible, and could they become the new snow days?

Snow days happen due to the travel conditions that restrict students from making it to school safely. While there is not a minimum amount of snow that must fall overnight for a snow day to be called, oftentimes the snow amount must exceed a few inches. Snow is a visible, tangible barrier that prevents students from safely completing their journey to school due to streets being frozen, and snowplows unable to clear the roads in time. Because snow can be seen covering the roads or someone’s driveway, when a snow day is called, there is always a strong justification for this cancellation of school, one that only needs to be seen by looking outside your window. 

Cold days, on the other hand, would call for the assessment of the unseen. Oftentimes, an emphasis is placed on the quantitative data, the objects that can be measured, counted or felt. Cold days fall under this category of qualitative data, not quantitative. While we can see the car that is struggling to drive through the snow, we can only feel the cold that assaults us when we step outside. While cold days would rely on physical data from the weather channel telling what the temperature is outside, cold days would more importantly rely on human interpretation of what degree is too cold for students to come to school. Questions surrounding cold days persist. Should a cold day be called based on the actual temperature, or what the temperature feels like? If it is cold in the morning, but supposed to get hotter in the afternoon, could a two hour delay be applicable instead? Compared to cold days, snow days are simple. When something like snow is seen, there is evidence that school can’t commence. We cannot hold, see, taste or smell cold. Yet, the cold is there nonetheless. 

One reason cold days could be put in effect is to take into account the students who have to walk to school each day. At Niskayuna High School, there is a growing number of students who walk back and forth from their house to school. Either through rain, snow, sun or storm, these students endure the long walk to school. In extreme cold, even with all the proper snow wear, it can be freezing for these students to travel in this cold weather. Even if students aren’t walking to school, so many students still have to wait at bus stops, exposing them to the cold further. For students without the proper outfits, simply standing outside in the cold can be a torturous endeavor. Additionally, being in the cold for too long could lead to students getting sick. Niskayuna High School is lucky to have heating inside, however, in below zero temperatures, despite the warmth of being inside, it is inevitable the building will still have the mark of the cold outside, either from students sitting too close to windows, or simply the aggressive coldness leaking into the building with each time a door is opened. 

Just as there was a debate about if virtual days should replace snow days, there is now the question if cold days could become an option in the future. In Niskayuna, snow is always a hit or miss. Oftentimes, as has been happening this year, it either snows over break, or during the school days, so that snow days are averted. With the dropping temperatures this winter, cold days could be a new option to address this problem, transforming student hopes for snow into wishes simply for coldness.