Snow days

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by yash101

You guys are so lucky. At least you get snow Our winter is your summer!

There are advantages and disadvantages of both hot and cold weather. If it is cold, you can wear more clothing, or even burn some wood (hey, the stuff grows on trees!). But imagine getting several inches of snow, once a week, that you absolutely MUST move off any surfaces you might need (driveway, sidewalk, street). And if you do not move it, that surface cannot be used until March or so. Look up "Sisyphus".

Hot feels nice sometimes, but 120 in the shade is brutal, I don't care if there's no humidity. When your shoe soles start to melt, you are in trouble. When it is real hot, you can remove clothes only to a certain point, and then what?

(I wonder: Do they close schools because it is too hot?)

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

(I wonder: Do they close schools because it is too hot?)

Yep. We've had both heat (is that what it's called?) days and snow days.

[jvriezen]

I believe we've had school closings due to heat. (not during build season though!)

And meeting offsite on a snow day is not allowed. The point is, it is too 'dangerous' to expect kids to travel. I'd not be surprised if technically, meeting 'online' via Skype or Google hangout is not allowed, given that the district rules were probably written assuming meetings meant travel.

That's why we are meeting on Sunday.

[Tem1514 Mentor]

Yep we have snow days and that's one thing but a whole of exam days.

I would take a snow day now and then but a whole week, oh well we just work around it.

[Alan Anderson]

The TechnoKats have a workshop that isn't part of the school. Years ago, a snow day during build season meant a chance to spend many hours working on the robot. Now, we're kept from doing that by the strictly enforced policy of cancelling all extracurricular activites, on-site and off-site, when school is closed for weather. We will sometimes consider opening up the shop for an unofficial evening work session if the weather improves during the day, but we don't want to put our supportive school in a bad situation in case there's an "incident".

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

There are advantages and disadvantages of both hot and cold weather. If it is cold, you can wear more clothing, or even burn some wood (hey, the stuff grows on trees!). But imagine getting several inches of snow, once a week, that you absolutely MUST move off any surfaces you might need (driveway, sidewalk, street). And if you do not move it, that surface cannot be used until March or so. Look up "Sisyphus".

Hot feels nice sometimes, but 120 in the shade is brutal, I don't care if there's no humidity. When your shoe soles start to melt, you are in trouble. When it is real hot, you can remove clothes only to a certain point, and then what?

(I wonder: Do they close schools because it is too hot?)

This happened in your very own state ~2 years ago, Don (and yes, our school's website did say it was due to 'extreme heat')

Snow days are always a major inconvenience, but it's an obstacle that you just need to always have a plan for/expect to happen eventually.

I just hope that the snow won't stop FIRST from releasing an encrypted manual tomorrow..

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

This happened in your very own state ~2 years ago, Don (and yes, our school's website did say it was due to 'extreme heat')

In New Jersey? OMG.

And nice, getting the school board to bring up the team name like that....

[Celia]

To go back to the original topic of the thread, our team usually meets on a snow day. Being from southeastern Michigan (= no lake effect snow), what snow we have typically melts by midday/end of school. Unless it's very icy or the roads are unplowed, we meet. Of course, some student absences are understood, but we always have enough people to keep working.

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

(I wonder: Do they close schools because it is too hot?)

We have had a "hot day". A few years ago, our air conditioning stopped working and we got sent home. Like most people here are saying, Monday is a different story. We're banking on a "cold day"