Friday Nor'Easter: T-Minus 24 Hours

It is not our style to pull back the curtain and divulge the particulars of GSD Staff meetings, but boy, oh, boy was this afternoon's meeting a doozy! Let's just say my hands are still shaking as we nearly came to blows. 

To put it mildly, there's some disagreement about what the heck is going to happen on Friday. While we--actually I, as the chief coms guy of this operation--pride ourselves on the consistency of our messaging about snow days, this mid-December Miller B nor'easter has divided the office. We think the division will be reparable, but right now there's not a lot of warm and fuzzy banter in the break room.

But enough of that. You came here for solid snow day info. And here's what we got: 

While most indicators would suggest we will have widespread snow days and delays for everyone in the county (yes!), the data we're seeing about air temperature is deeply concerning (no!). A good majority of the staff thinks that the models are over-inflating the temperatures and tonight's radiational cooling plus the heavy rate of snowfall (once it starts) will suppress temperatures and give the whole county a plowable snow event. 

But there's a loud and veteran faction on the staff who think the warm air--temps will be above freezing at the start of the storm tomorrow night--is going to suppress snow totals drastically. And with some models predicting temperatures into the mid and even upper 30s during the day on Friday, they think this storm has major bust potential.

So, we're going to hold the Confidence Meter right where it is for now.* We love the fact that we're seeing eye-popping snow total projections for the eastern half of the county. Florida, Savoy, Hoosac Valley, Central Berkshire--you should all be safe and have a snow day as the elevation in your district means buses will have a devil of a time on Friday morning. Those schools more toward the east and in lower elevations--North Adams, Mount Greylock, Pittsfield, Lee, Lenox, Berkshire Hills, Southern Berkshire--it's going to be touch and go. At the very least delays are highly likely, but if we see the changeover to rain in that 4-5 AM slot, then Superintendents are going to have a much harder decision.

We know most of you would like to know if any Superintendents will call the snow day tomorrow, either at the end of school or on Thursday night. A few schools and districts will have that luxury--our northwestern elementary schools and Central Berkshire, most likely--but most will not. Perhaps they will surprise that, but that's gut feeling tonight.

Again, we should underscore that things are looking very favorable, but there's a big "but" looming out there in the form of dreaded warm air. The last thing we want to do is get your hopes up only to see them obliterated on Friday morning when you are staring in the bathroom mirror brushing your teeth and asking yourself, "Why am I going to school today?"

Nice map, WNYT, Channel 13 in Albany. And Snow Map-alooza--coming tomorrow!

*A reminder about percentages on the Meter. The percentage is combination of two projections: 1) The chance any student in Berkshire County has of getting a delay, snow day, or release; and 2) The percentage of schools in the County to have a delay, snow day, or release. So, a 15% chance of a snow day means that you have a 15% chance of being in a school that will have a snow day because we think 15% of schools in Berkshire County will have a snow day.