Winter Wonderland

The first flakes of snow fell as I left campus about 5:30 last night. Thanks to a snow plow I am awake to see that in just under 12 hours 4 inches or so has accumulated (possibly more) as I am basing my observations on the amount piled on the deck railings. While it has snowed twice before this semester this is the first real snow in my eyes. The snow on Thanksgiving didn't stick. The snow on Dec. 1 stuck but it was only an hour or so of snow before it switched to rain and washed it all away. This has been the magical kind of snow. Calm conditions so that it floats straight down from the sky and frosts branches, bushes, roofs, etc. It has also been the type of snow that sparkles when it catches the light.

Now I am awake and trying to get an idea of road conditions and whether or no campus is opening on schedule. All of the public schools surrounding campus are on a 2 hour delay. This phase of the snow is supposed to taper off and lake effect snows pick up this afternoon.

Assuming campus operates as normally, I give my last two lectures of the semester today. Of course attendance will stink today as the "I can't come to campus because of the snow," emails have already started arriving. A snow day would complicate the end of the semester but a day of snuggling with a blanket and catching up with correspondence and grading sounds wonderful -- not that I think this will happen.

The magic of the snow is the only thing taking the edge off of my 1.5 hours of sleep last night.

Having now cleared the snow off my car and ventured from home to campus, I think my estimate of how much snow fell was to low.

Not how I planned to bring the courses to an end

I left fro campus shortly after 7 a.m. At 9:45 part of the power goes out on campus. Part as in some offices had dead computers but working lights, two of the three rows of lights in my classroom worked, very strange. I go off to teach my 10 a.m. class is in a room with windows. Only about 8 of 40 students are there when class starts along with 8 students taking part in a campus visit. About 40 minutes into the class a voice on the loud speaker announces that campus is closing as a result of a power outage and everyone needs to leave campus. I plead with the students to stay 5 more minutes to complete teaching evaluations. Chaos reign as folks try to figure out if all classes for the rest of the day are canceled, how to deal with papers that were to be turned in today, what to do about classes where we planned to give course evaluations this afternoon, etc.

I suppose all this is fitting given that the semester started with class on hold for severe weather and a computer system failure.

I headed back to Chesterton along roads that are becoming very narrow thanks to drifting snow where I met CR for have lunch at the Thai place in town. Now I am home and preparing to take a nap. Hopefully campus will regain power soon so that I can deal with grading online work.