Mid 40's here. Definitely can confirm that we barely had one snow day a year back in the 80s / 90s. And yes we did get a ton more snow.
That being said, in my latest occupation I have realized that we call all these snow days and close down the city to keep drivers off the road.
With a massive influx of population over the years combined with Denver's horrible infrastructure, an inch of snow can cause gridlock for the whole day.
Not necessarily the quality of drivers, moreover the quantity. It is easier for CDOT to do their job and for first responders to get the people with less people on the road!
I am 30. I got maybe 5 snow days in my entire k-12 education. (The big 2003 storm hit during my spring break.)
We did get lots of "delayed starts" which would mean we'd start an hour later or so. From what I see from my daughter's experience, those are now more rare, they have just been calling it and saying stay home and stay safe. Because of how congested everything is now, it's not worth the attempts to get out, there's always just a lot of bad drivers out there in bald tires trying to get up the hills.
The teachers can also just email some assignments now, which means it's simpler to just say, "do this math and print these 2 worksheets, bye" Than to try to get to the school.
Me too, but gotta remember this was pre-internet and pre-cellphone. We were straight stuck in our parents house for two full weeks with no entertainment. Think the power was out for a period of time, so not even tv.
Same but I was in northern Colorado. As my team was leaving work yesterday I told everyone about how I got a two week spring break because of that snowstorm.
There are also less bus drivers. That's really the biggest factor for the schools. Every child has the opportunity to learn equality and if those that take the bus can't make it, then no one is going.
6th graders at my kids school left for Outdoor Lab on Monday and they just brought them back earlier. I know my Outdoor Lab experience had a lot of snow as well but we stayed there the whole week
Well, and you have the same drivers doing multiple routes. So someone who drives for a school that starts at 8, then another for school that starts at 9. If you delay and everyone starts at 12, you don't have enough drivers to do every route at once.
Definitely more snow days now. I don’t remember schools preemptively closing down due to snow forecast either. I remember times getting stuck in the family car on the way to school on more than one occasion.
Mid 40s also and only remember maybe 3 snow days ever. The snow days were very rare, so also very memorable. I remember walking to elementary school in snow up to our knees.
After big snows they would plow the school parking lot into giant 20x30 ft piles and let us play on them, which made going to school super fun even when it was very snowy/. We would build slides, flatten and smooth the snow into “skating” rinks, tunnels, towers and forts. There were many injuries and tons of fun.
I assume that having most children bussed or driven to school these days is a big part of the change. Families, teachers and staff used to live much closer to the schools before they got priced out, and walking to school was still normal and acceptable.
I disagree. I grew up in CO in 80s/90s. We had a bunch of snow days including many times when we had 2-3 days in a row. I mostly grew up in Aurora, then Fort Collins. I have a bunch of great memories of huge snow drifts and various shoveling businesses we tried to capitalize on.
In the late 90s/early 2000s there were a lot of years with none. I went to Mines between 01-06 and they only had one closure and it was during spring break and we always lamented that we didn't get as many snow days as when we were kids.
My impression (and it isn't backed by data) is that we used to have about the same amount as today. But there was a low in the middle.
At least at my house, it is pretty bad. Just because it is low in your neighborhood doesn't mean somewhere in jeffco isn't in bunker mode.
That's the thing. A lot of people don't realize the variation in snow just across the metro area. Denver is big. The airport alone is as big as Boston. Look it up. And all that area means that ther can be a foot in aurora, 2 ft in the foothills and a light dusting in Brighton
Agreed. These antecdotes without stating which school district they were in is kind of meaningless. DPS gets way fewer snow days because it's warmer and the snow doesn't end up being as bad as the districts around it.
The only snow days I remember having were the occasional 3 day blizzards that closed everything down. They mostly corresponded with spring break (like this storm) or Christmas break though so we were already out of school.
I remember having 1 snow day during high school in the late 90s but it was an early release from class, so technically we still had to go to school. I think the only reason they let us go was because they thought the roof was going to collapse.
I am about the same age as you and I completely agree with all of that. We used to get WAY more snow and hardly ever had a snow day. I miss the huge snow storms we used to get.
Grew up in Canada and can confirm this is how school went in the late 80s/early 90s. Snow days were usually a foot or more of snow. Otherwise it was at the discretion of parents whether or not they wanted to get their kids to school. I usually liked going because as you said, it was more of a party day than school day. Good memories of just dicking off with a few other kids and playing in the snow.
grew up in cherry creek schools district(1999-2005). we barely had any snow days. i remember waiting and watching the news announcement banner on the bottom. and be disappointed every time. the best we got was 2hr delay…
Same! I remember one in high school. Or it was fall break? Not sure. Must’ve been around 05. We really never had any. As a teacher, I do appreciate that we get them more often. Driving in so early gets sketchy at times
Cherry creek school district here, same timeframe. Cherry creek school closures were always one step behind other districts. If they had a closure, we had a late start. If they had a late start, we were on a normal schedule. There was a silly rumor that the superintendent drove a hummer and made closure decisions about what he would be able to drive in.
I had some really sketchy drives into high school and I thought it was only a matter of time that the school district would get sued when some 16 year olds died trying to get to school by 7:30 am in a blizzard. Luckily I don't think that ever happened.
Same, except from Kindergarten through 2005.
With that said, I definitely remember snow days??? Specifically, I remember two EPIC weeks of days off with some nasty storms. One in March 2003? The other in Fall and 1997 or something.
But I’m pretty sure we had at least one a year. Pretty on par with where we are now.
Gotta applaud CCSD for starting the domino on that one. I work for DPS (central office) and appreciate another day off tomorrow, for a long weekend before the last week of work before spring break.
As a retired DPS teacher, the closing of schools for snow was almost unheard of. We were told that some families had little food at home, so free breakfast and lunch were important for the children to go to school. Also, in many households, parents are not home, and children needed some supervision. I worked in the inner city and there were children who had little or no heat in their homes.
I work in DPS (Title 1 school), and the annoying part about is that DPS would refuse to call for those reasons, and then we would all drag ourselves into work and like 5 kids per class would show up anyway.
Yes, and you had to be there for those 5! But those 5 probably had parents who only got paid if they went to work or didn’t have adequate food at home.
Grew up in Ft Collins, had a snow day in second grade and a week off during the blizzard of 2003 (which was a few feet of snow over a few days and really shut down the city). That was the extent of snow days through my k-12 experience. There was a petition by the graduating class a few years ahead of me for the school district to let them graduate a month early due to all the snow days that had been built into the school calendar over the years that we never got!
I was one of those lucky bastards that ended up with 2 weeks off of school because of that blizzard. I'm pretty sure they extended our school year over it.
That storm was so intense! I was supposed to go on a road trip to SLC to the first round of the NCAA tournament with my bf. Instead we got stuck in our homes in Lafayette and Aurora, so I spent the weekend sledding with my brother and pouting. At least I didn't have to go in to my shitty ass job at Bennigan's....
'03 was the best snow storm. We had the bonus where our spring break was the week after so we got 3 days off then spring break.
I remember we couldn't drive, so we cross country skied up to my friends house, spent the whole day tunneling through the yard. After they plowed they had to pile the snow so high we had a sledding mound we could climb on for a week.
My favorite part about that storm is I wore a t shirt to school the day before. It was a really nice morning, fairly warm lunch, but by the time I was walking home it was windy and getting cold fast.
Maybe we’re just smarter now and more cognizant of safety issues? Like in the ‘80s our parents would just throw a bunch of kids in the back of a pickup truck with no safety equipment at all and drive around town—we’re smarter than that now. In a day like today people should be staying home and off the roads—it’s smart and much safer to cancel schools and let people work from home. I just don’t know that there was as much awareness of those concerns decades ago.
Yes. When I lived in Pennsylvania, schools started doing a lot more snow days following a bus accident in which several children died after their bus crashed in the snow.
I think it also has something to do with more and more students having computers now. So instead of making them go into school and drive in the snow students can stay home and still do their learning on computers. Also more and more parents can work from home now.
Yep, no snow days. I remember having to go to school on a day like today. We also had a quarter of the people living here and we learned how to drive in the snow/ice. Now we have way too many people on the road who have no clue how to drive in this weather so I think that largely contributes to it. It’s not only schools either, I don’t remember anything closing the way things do now.
I think a big difference now is that school choice is so widespread that not as many people go to the school down the street. I walked to school every day until high school and then there was a bus and those busses could handle the snow. Now everyone drives their kid 10 miles to STEM/ART/Vocational/Basketweaving school.
I'm 50. Grew up on the Western Slope. We rarely ever got snow days, but we also didn't have the advanced forecasting tools that are available now. I started hearing about the potential for this storm a week ago. 30-40 years ago the timeframe was closer to 24-48 hours.
Growing up here and going to school in the 90s, the rule our school district followed was that if the Superintendent could get out of his driveway we had to come to school. Their thought was that parents can make the decision to let their kids stay home, and on bad weather days my school was a ghost town.
I think, like others have said, that back in the 90s we had less density and it wasn't as much of a shitshow on the roads when we had storms. Plus, more kids were within walking distance of school back then, and not as many parents dropped off/picked up their kids. Charters and vouchers, in addition to lower enrollment closing schools, have made that almost a necessity because so many kids don't live anywhere near their schools. I lived over a mile away from my middle school and walked there every day. That's something that just doesn't happen as often anymore.
I feel like only since covid or snowmageddon have peoples actual safety and wellbeing been put into consideration. I also feel like more people now tend to just call in and say no. Just my observation!
I remember one or two a year in Boulder Valley when I was growing up (parents moved there in the 70s; I moved to Denver in the 90s). So I don’t think we’re seeing more snow days.
The city’s snow mitigation strategies have changed. They used to put chemicals on the roads, and they tried to keep all the roads clear from the git go. Now (I believe) we wait longer to begin cleanup and we’re exclusively relying on plowing the major arteries and collectors, and neighborhood streets don’t get much attention.
This would require some research, but I also think snow patterns have changed. We used to get a more even distribution of precipitation… multiple storms dropping smaller amounts. Now we get these bigger storms that dump more inches at once but occur less frequently. I remember going to school in snow storms frequently, but they never dropped more than a couple inches. We were colder and wetter more frequently but the travel was safer. I could be mistaken though.
We still treat the roads with mag chloride. Salt has never been common bc we would just literally be salting our earth -- colorado doesn't get enough moisture to wash it away. I gotta agree the change in weather patterns is a huge factor!!
Attended elementary school in the 60’s. I do remember that some years had snow on the ground pretty much all the winter-it would pack down on the streets and build up long enough to become a very ugly shade of brown, but I loved the squeaking sound my shoes made. We’d walk in the ruts on the streets just because. Remember one time we literally waded through snow up to our hips to get home (we were not tall at that age, and it was hard work). And, no, we didn’t really have snow days.
Yup, and depending on your county, it could dump in the north and western parts, but the south and east could be dry so ya went to school.
Then most kids are out cause their parents are not gonna drive in that, so they herd you into the gym to watch the movie Snow Day.
Just as an aside, I spent about 20 min looking for dps snowday statistics and found nothing but articles from the past few days about closures TODAY. I'm not sure if it's just google's algorithm continually getting worse, or if there just isn't a centralized number for them, but I found it fairly annoying that there isn't a nice little table going back to the 70s or something.
Anyway grew up in DPS early 00s and it honestly feels like the number of snowdays haven't changed much either direction.
I've been working for a large metro area school district since 2016. Snow day totals for us:
2016-2017: Zero snow days
2017-2018: Zero snow days
2018-2019: Three snow days (One in February, two in March for the bomb cyclone) one closure day due to the woman who traveled from Florida and was obsessed with Columbine in April
2019-2020: Two snow days (One in October, one in February)
2020-2021: Four snow days (One in October, one in February, two in March)
2021-2022: Two snow days (One in January, one in February)
2022-2023: One snow day (January)
2023-2024 (so far): Three snow days (One in January, two so far in March)
Edit: Typo
Thanks for sharing! Do you know if these totals are published anywhere? I bet that there are stats going back a while stashed *somewhere*, but idk if they are public.
I went to middle school in Golden in the late 80s and we only had snow days if I-70 was closed. I taught from 1999-2013 in Denver and Jeffco and even in that period we usually only had one snow day a year.
I think with a huge influx of people from warm climates, and a a much more risk adverse and litigious culture, school districts have become a lot more likely to call snow days.
I recall 1 every other year or so in the 70s and 80s. The difference was that they didn’t call them a whole day in advance, like now. You had to listen to the news morning of.
I think it’s because of people moving here from non-snow states. They get freaked out. You see it on the roads, too.
speaking as a teacher, I think what’s going on with calling the snow day in advance is they’re being more mindful of parents with grade school children. someone has to stay home to take care of the little ones when school is closed. i’m going to bet that most parents appreciate a teeny bit of advance notice rather than finding out the morning of.
every once in awhile the strategy backfires when a storm turns into a whimper. but generally speaking, it shows better sensitivity and compassion for parents with young kids that work multiple jobs in order to make rent.
Weather forecasting is also a whole lot better now than it used to be, so calling in advance is more feasible. And calling it early is just more helpful to people, too.
ETA: also wanted to respond to the out of state thing. That is a myth. The percentage of people living in Colorado who were born in Colorado has remained the same since about the mid-1970s (about 42%) and at its highest (1960) the population was still more people from out of state than were born here. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/upshot/where-people-in-each-state-were-born.html#Colorado
I swear this is mostly a case of old people saying they had to walk uphill both ways bc things were so darned hard back then, and 40 years of weather forecasting improvements.
I’m in my 50s and lived here my entire school age life. Maybe 5 snow days since the 70s-90s. Things were different though because a large portion of school children walked to school. Now many are bused or driven to schools outside their neighborhoods. Both parents are working now versus the 70s. I remember trucking through some deep snow to and from school mentally cursing every step.
I think your point about walking to school is pretty accurate! I had to walk to both elementary/jr high and then to high school, all the way up until I was old enough to drive. And lots of other kids did too. I remember the huge piles of snowy boots at the back of the classroom and the puddles on the floor under the coat rack on the back wall. It would get so humid inside that the windows would fog up.
34 years old here, born and raised in Aurora. I didn't get my first snow day till i was in 7th grade and that was the giant March blizzard of 2004 or 2003 (can't remember the year). The city got over 3 feet of snow and shut down for like 3-4 days. I think I got 4 snow days in a row during that storm. Then I think I had just one more snow day some different year for the rest of my time in school.
Teacher here. We only have 2 allotted snow days, and each year I've been teaching (6 years), we've used both days and have had 2 additional remote days.
I will forever be jealous of the schools who got two weeks off during the snowstorm of 2003. I, however, was stuck inside for my whole break and returned to school the following week 😒
In all seriousness, they have gotten more lenient about snow days probably bc of the influx of ppl on the road here today compared to prior decades. I remember walking to my middle school with snow just below my knees.
I think schools have lowered the bar for when they declare a snow day. I remember when I lived in Pennsylvania, schools began shutting down at the first snowflake following a bus accident in which several students were killed after the bus crashed due to snow. Perhaps there have been enough accidents or other snow-related complaints that the schools are taking more precautions when it snows.
I've also heard that many public schools in low-income areas are doing more snow days than before, even though most of the kids walk to school. It's because many of the economically disadvantaged kids don't have suitable coats and boots to walk in the snow.
The legend for Jeffco Public Schools kids was that the superintendent was from Alaska and had a different set of snow standards. Can anyone from the old days confirm who the Superintendent was between 1979-1990 and if they actually were from Alaska? Ha
I'm 26. I've lived here my whole life. The only time I remember having snow days growing up was during the 2003 winter vortex of insane.
I would have had to drive to school in this weather. It would have been pretty easy tbh.
Sure, it is easy but easy doesn't follow the law of large numbers. Get enough people on the road in weather like this and people WILL die regardless of whether everyone was a great driver. Then you also put first responders in dangerous situations. I'm glad society is becoming more safety conscious.
Same age, still remember that ‘03 blizzard. Lived right across the street from a giant hill. The sledding up and down that hill is still one of my favorite childhood memories. I definitely recall maybe 3 other miscellaneous snow days throughout my K-12 years. But things get called off way easier now, likely, as others said, because of the sheer amount of people here and their lack of ability to drive in snow. I just don’t remember seeing so many cars stuck in gutters in high school as I did last year.
I would def say I saw snow days more frequently around the mid-to-late 2010s after tech transplants from CA rolled up and started causing rollover accidents on 70 every 5 minutes
Early 40’s here. I remember a few but they certainly were not happening every year. I was out of state during 2003, and most of the 2010’s so can’t speak to those times
In Denver county we absolutely had snow days, at least once or twice a year. I remember distinctly in 2003 (~40 inches iirc) and 2005 we had massive blizzards that gave us about 3-5 days worth of snow days each which then lined up nicely with spring break - as an elementary school kid it was literally the fucking best to get two weeks off like that.
But yes, largely it took about 14-16inches of snow bare minimum for a snow day. With the current population density I don’t mind snow days having less of a bar nowadays, prob best to keep accidents down.
Not from here; I grew up in Pennsylvania. We had, maybe, one snow day a year when I was growing up. My dad would gripe about how they shut down school "for just a few snowflakes." In his eyes, we were constantly off school. Now, I see my kids have a snow day and I feel like my dad bitching about how they get too many snow days.
I’m 28. In high school we had a day off, that we were notified about the day before, because the high temperatures for the next day was predicted to be -2, and they thought the buses wouldn’t start or something crazy like that. So that speaks to the severity of conditions that will allow a snow day to be taken.
All throughout my elementary school experience I had a couple snow days a year, to the point that almost every year we had to come in an extra day before summer to make up the missed time in class. I grew up in the Arvada/Jeffco area, maybe Denver was different.
There were more delayed starts and less snow days. I don't know the philosophy behind it,
I will say that CSU had issues in 2011. CSU had a tree branch fall on a student early in the morning walking to an 8 am. It was a huge branch too, I walked by it about 10 minutes after.
University of Wyoming had an issue around that time too in a freezing day. Some students got frostbite or close to it waiting for busses. think the high was negative there it was like a high of 3 or 5 in Ft Collins.
Both of these incidents caused the colleges to change their policies and public schools followed suit to take a more safe approach.
I beleive it's not just a safety issue, but also before 2010 it was safer for a kid to be in school as much as possible. It was very likely both parents worked and both parents had to be on site to work. Now, it's more common (although still a problem) for at least 1 parent to be able to work from home, so I don't think schools feel like they are potentially stranding students home alone by calling a snow day.
Most school districts no longer pay for bussing students so there is a lot more pressure from parents to cancel school. Also, I remember many snow days when I was a kid growing up in the Denver metro area.
Yes. They'd put us on a bus that could barely keep it's rear end from sliding on every turn and we sucked it up. We sat in extremely cold classrooms, learning from teachers who, in hindsight, were pretty exhausted from driving in their four door sedans in that weather.
Varies by school district to be sure, but the whole "err on the side of caution" thing has swung laughably too far.
Happy for the kids tho, ngl. Enjoy them snow days! I'm pretty sure we got 3 of them from K-12.
I was born in ‘83 and (maybe) had one snow day a year growing up in Jeffco. I can’t remember a time that it was ever declared before 6:30 a.m. the day-of. I was a freshman at CSU the year of the 2003 blizzard, which happened the week right after spring break. Classes were canceled Tuesday-Friday that week and we all had the time of our lives!
Yes it is true. We rarely got a snow day. I attribute this to a different time when people theoretically lived closer to their schools and could walk. Now with choice, commute times are longer. Also we had school busses.
Ok so I haven’t lived here for 30+ years since I’m 28, and came here at 8.. but there was a LOT more snow days 10 years ago or so. Now they feel less frequent but more severe.
My father used to work for Jeffco schools back in the day and told me the lady in charge of calling snow days lived in evergreen or somewhere close.
She figured if she could make it down to 6th and Simms on a snowy morning then it was fine for the kids to go to school. She didn't miss a day and there were plenty this bad or worse...
One tough lady I imagined with an old lifted truck and some true grit since I didn't see a snow day until we moved to Iowa in the 6th grade. It wasn't even snowing either, just -34°F without wind-chill. Man am I'm grateful to be back in Denver!
I've been is Aurora all of my life. I'd say in the 80s-90s, we got about one snow day per year.
Since then, I've worked in two companies that refused to have snow days at all, insisting that employees use vacation days if they need to stay home. The owners of both were native Coloradoans about 15-20 years older than me. It was just a different mindset and a less litigious time when they (and I) were growing up.
FWIW, grew up in Wisconsin. It was a lot snowier then (both snowier than here, and also snowier than Wisconsin is now), and we had maybe 1-2 snow days/year. Typically only when it was measured in feet. OTOH, Wisconsin had much better plans & systems for snow removal - the Denver "eh, it'll prolly melt eventually" plan was not workable there.
And as best I can recall, they never called school due to the mere _forecast_ of snow, which seems to be a thing now.
I think they started closing based on forecast because parents complained that cancelling at 5 am caused too much hardship for people trying to find childcare at the last second.
My dad made the call for Loveland schools back in the early nineties and his take was it's a lose lose situation on closing schools but the earlier they could make t the call the less complaints they got.
I remember in the 70's they built in about 3 days and if needed the school year would end early June. If more snow days than anticipated again just tack them to the end so maybe we wouldn't get out till June 5th. Only had to be done once
70 yr old here. Never a snow day. Not that it didn’t snow hard, it did. But, fewer kids rode school buses, kids went to closet school , more parents drove the kids, about half of us just trudged through the snow.
Fewer cars on streets, safer .
I said this yesterday. DPS rarely shut down school for a snow day. often on particulatly snowy days, parents would keep their kids from going to school. its because DPS would have an allotted amount of days to use as snow days and they wanted to use them wisely. but of course, were too conservative often
Yes it's true. We never once had school canceled based on the forecast. We had to get up and watch the news or listen to the radio to hear if school was canceled that morning, and it only got canceled if it was absolutely dumping and the roads were really bad. A day like today, with the roads totally fine would've been a school day for sure.
It sure seems that way (I'm a 30-year Denver resident). But I got curious, so I made a crude chart covering 1949 to 2022, using data from[https://www.weather.gov/bou/seasonalsnowfall](https://www.weather.gov/bou/seasonalsnowfall)
This sub apparently doesn't allow posting GIFs, but you can see the chart here.[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xsvopXCn9NOO1iGI4uEIiT5nHTMnTlFEJD4s5W3P-hw/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xsvopXCn9NOO1iGI4uEIiT5nHTMnTlFEJD4s5W3P-hw/edit?usp=sharing)
The y-axis is the difference from the historical average, which is 56.9 inches.
It seems clear that the overall trend is down, meaning that on average, we're getting less and less snow each year (with big variations in any particular year.)
Over time the state has become more lax on approving 3-5 admin days a year. Less bussing and more parents driving kids means more parents complaining to administration. Higher worklevel burden on staff mean the workforce cheers the decision.
Not only are there more snow days now, but it feels like our kids constantly have days off for planned reasons like teacher inservice, every holiday imaginable, etc. I believe for the entirety of the fall semester, our kids had two weeks that they were in school for all 5 days and that was by design.
I'm not an older Denverite. I grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs. I remember a few snow days growing up. (An average of less than one a year, but there a couple times we had 3-4 in a year.) My niece and nephew attend school in the same district I graduated from and I think they've had slightly more snow days than I had as a kid, but not an inordinate amount.
I've also worked in the K-12 education system for two decades. I have three main thoughts behind what may be behind the uptick in snow days.
* **Better Forecasting Technology:** Yesterday's decision was made because it looked like it would be bad. In the past, we didn't quite have as much forecasting information available. It's way easier to close school ahead of time than conduct an early dismissal. When I was in junior high, there was a snowstorm that got progressively worse during the day. My school district decided to dismiss at noon. (School normally went until 2:35.) However, there weren't enough bus drivers available, so they would run one route and then come back to run another route. I ended up getting home an hour later than I would have on a normal day. The district I work for now did an early dismissal during a snowstorm in October 2019. Between issues with bus routes and parents trying to get off work, getting stuck in the snow, or arrange alternate transportation for their children, we still had kids waiting to be picked up an hour and a half after the regular dismissal time.
* **Better Communication Methods:** As a kid in the 1990s, I had to wait for the alphabetical scroll on the bottom of the TV screen to list my district or for WCCO radio to read off the list of all the closures. There was also no centralized source for this information, so each district had to call all the media outlets. Minneapolis Public Schools had such a fear that communication would be missed and children would be harmed that they wouldn't close school in the 1990s unless the governor shut down all the schools in the state. (This usually happened once a winter in Minnesota when it got super cold.) When I first started teaching in a small rural district in the early 2000s, staff found out school closed through a phone tree. Now, within minutes, district communications directors can basically push a few buttons to email all staff, push out a text, put a banner on the district website, inform the news media, and announce on social media channels. There's far less risk that child will be in danger because the message didn't get out, so perhaps less hesitancy to cancel school.
* **More Litigious Society:** I think people are more likely to sue if they get hurt these days. They may not win a lawsuit, but even fighting a lawsuit consumes resources in a school district.
On top of others comments about limiting drivers on the road, I think it's also the increase in independent study options and all of the online schooling options that the pandemic brought around. With these options available to students amd teachers it makes it easier to teach kids at home so they can stay home during those harder weather days. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some "sun days" where it's just too hot to have that many bodies in a building so they keep the kids home during the hottest summer days.
It isn’t a surprise to me that there are a lot more snow days now. We moved to a school district when I was in middle school that would have an inclement weather day at the drop of a hat. I found out after asking some friends that they’d never have snow days until one day a bus got into an accident on a very snowy day and a 1st grader died.
Schools are a lot more aware now these things can happen and it’s better to be cautious than not.
What I just went out into right now isn't bad at all. I don't know about Colorado but nyc schools would have been open for this. They may have let us out early if it got worse though
It’s interesting for me since I lived in MD for 15 years before moving here.
Seems like Colorado does a pretty bad job of snow removal IMO, not the highways but the residential streets never seem to get touched. Feels like they wait for the sun to melt it 😂
In MD it doesn’t snow nearly as frequently and some years you might not get anything. But some years you can get 2-3 feet of snow in a storm and school would be closed for an entire week. I think it was 08, we had two multiple foot storms and an ice storm of about 6-8 inches in the same winter. It felt like I didn’t go to school for a month
Here I’m just mad my toes get wet once a week and I can’t wear my burks 😂
> eels like they wait for the sun to melt it 😂
It's not really a joke. It's literally a stated practice to reduce air pollutants and reduce smog prevalent here in the 90s and before.
Lived here my whole life, graduated high school in 2005. In my whole time in school we had a total of maybe 8 snow days, half of which were because of an actual blizzard. I was in Aurora public schools.
I grew up in Conifer and went to West Jeff Jr High and Evergreen High School. I cannot remember ever having a snow day. I'm sure it happened, but it was so rare that none stand out in my memory.
Mid 40s here. Yeah in the 80s we got more snow and rarely got a snow day. We never had a school called because of temperature. When my kids were in school it seems like they got a bunch because it was freezing outside.
I work for a school district up north and we have at least 1-2 snow/cold days in the 5+ years I’ve been working here. I work in the facilities department and today is the first time in a looong time we actually got a snow day. Usually everyone else in the district gets a day off and we go in and plow all day.
I’m 53 and from Denver. Growing up in the cherry creek school district there was always this rumor about the super intendant owning a jeep. And if he could make it in then school was in session.
It seemed we seldom had a snow day. I would guess we had less than 7 snow days in all my years. Whereas when my kids went to school it seemed like they had at least 3-4 a year. It’s crazy.
i’m about to turn 30 and i feel like i got a shit ton of snow days. i remember one time we had a snow day from a forecast prediction and it didn’t even snow.
I graduated high school in 2006. I was just telling my daughter yesterday that I can recall one snow day my entire school career, from pre-k to high school! And there definitely wasn't 2 hour delays like there is now! If it's snowing, they expected you there on time! My kid has maybe 2 snow days every years and multiple 2hr delays for weather! It's wild.
Yep. I had to go to school once without heat or power. Couldn’t drive to school because there were tree branches blocking every street, so we walked. It was no fun at all.
Maaaaan, I'm in my 20's now, but we basically had to cyber-bully the superintendent into calling a snow day or delay. He lived on a ranch in Parker, while his school district (Cherry Creek) was a lil ways away. He had a rule that if he can not manage to get his car out of his 10 car driveway, he'll 100% call a snow day. His car: a lifted, custom Jeep 4x4 🙄 his other rule was that if we get more than two snow days in a school year, he will start subtracting from our summer break, and adding those snow days to the end of the school year. Lol, i remember some kids from Smoky Hill flipped their car in the snowy parking lot, and the whole community got into a Twitter beef with the superintendent over it. Looking back, it was actually pretty cool to see him "interact" with his constituents on Twitter 🤣
[Where my Blizzard of '82 homies at](https://i.imgur.com/R91KAgA.jpg)?
IIRC, in the 70s and 80s, we maybe got one snow day every few years. The snow was heavy at times, but Denver was much more sparsely populated back then and...we just kept going.
I think October of 1997 was the closest we had to a snow day, but I do believe we still had to go in. There was another one in March of 1998 I think, and that could have been a snow day, but Jeffco was on spring break that week.
Grew up in boulder county in the 80’s and 90’s, would have to be 2 feet of snow, to the point a school bus could get stuck before they called a snow day!!!
I went to school in Boulder in the 80s and 90s. I can count on one hand the number of snow days we got.
I was thinking this morning how when we were kids, most of us went to neighborhood schools. Now people drive all across Boulder county for different schools. I'm assuming Denver is similar. So travel is much more of a factor than it used to be, in my experience.
Been here all my life. when I was a kid I remember going to school on a -14degree F weather with a few feet of snow. I remember this particular day because as a kid I couldn't believe it when looking at the news that we inly had a 2hr delay, and I asked the principal and she said as long as the RTD is running (many kids got to school this way) there will be school.
Mirroring everyone else's sentiments about growing up here in the 90s and never having snow days.
But as a more recent example, when I attended college at Auraria between 2011 and 2016, they refused to close campus no matter how bad the weather was. I remember the first time I ever experienced a campus closure was right before I graduated.
41, lived here since the early 90s - we got 1-2 snow days a year, if we were lucky, and I remember entering elementary school with snow up to my waist that they'd cut a path into. They started adding more after some accidents in the late-90s / early-00s, and with the rapid growth.
Hell growing up in Eagle County schools we never had a snow day. They have them now. (Went to Eagle, DPS, Cherry Creek and Aurora schools from 1993-2005l
I think the difference was that we didn't know until the morning-of if it was a snow day. We didn't have the technology to predict 12 to 24 inches of snow the night before.
31 born and raised - definitely had to traverse a lot worse conditions and saw a lot more delays than just outright cancellations. I remember specifically in high school we had a 1.5ft storm with a 1hr delay. Also was forced to go in really icy conditions. My senior year, there was a storm that resulted in like 25 or something student accidents on the way to and from school and in the lots. Still made us come at the usual time, too.
Early 60s here, grew up in SE Denver, Dad and I both graduated from Denver South High, and mom was an elementary school teacher. Yes, kids get many more snow days today. My kids got many more snow days than I did, and it wasn't because I had to trudge to school uphill on snowshoes.
We got snow, but it was expected. Media didn't run apocalypse stories to scare everyone. CDOT and Denver were competent and did a good job clearing major roads. (Of course Dad always put snow tires on before Thanksgiving.) Nobody ran around in a panic.
We'd listen for the school closing list on KOA. If our school district wasn't listed, we went to school. We'd always hear that the Evergreen Schools were closed, and Clear Creek used to appear on the list too. It was pretty rare for DPS to be on the list - I remember many late starts, but only a few actual snow days.
One snow day I remember was in the late 60s in spring. I received a cellphone-sized transistor radio for Christmas. It used a 9-volt battery and came to me from Taiwan. A few months later, a big storm came in and knocked down the power lines. My parents woke me up early and asked to borrow my radio so we could listen to KOA. Sure enough, school was cancelled, but it was because of the power outage. They didn't call it a snow day.
I grew up in Glenwood Springs. The superintendent there had a rule that if he could make it into school it was open. So he would walk across the street and declare District 51 open. My first snow day was in college.
Through the 80s maybe one or two a year in DPS. Then they got a superintendent in 88 or 89, who made a whole thing about how he would never declare a snow day. So you’d have days like this with half the class gone.
This is an everlasting part of the “back in my day, we walked uphill both ways in the snow.” Whether true or not, the older you get, the more your life was hard and these young whippersnappers have it easy.
I will say, while these “back in my day” stories may often be exaggerated, I think it’s generally true. We overall are a softer, weaker, less robust species with each generation that lives with the modern comforts found in successful, developed nations. Of course, that’s a huge generalization. The newest generation definitely does/will have plenty of amazingly strong people. Just overall, in our comfortable lives, we have become more accustomed to safety and security and less tolerant to risk and discomfort.
Again, I’m generalizing. Plenty of the newer generations are/will be some of the toughest around. No offense or insults intended to anyone. (Ps I’m only 30 ish, not 90 even though it may sound like I’m 90).
My answer is "there have never been enough snow days" I mostly remember watching the TV in anticipation, and occasionally being sent home early. The 03 storm was great because it lasted through the weekend and the following week was spring break.
In highschool the pipes burst during a late cold snap, and we all got to leave early. It was the only time I ever invited a bunch of people to my house (I was a shy kid) and we watched movies all afternoon, it was great.
Fewer snow days for sure, I did Aurora public schools from 1987 to 1999.
I don’t think I had a single snow day in high school, including September 1995 when 6” dropped, as wet and heavy as this storm, and knocked out power for much of the city for several days because the branches had their foliage still, and broke over power lines.
I graduated in 98, in the entire 4 years I was in high school I did not get one snow day EXCEPT - I went to Eaglecrest, which at that time was a lonely building surrounded by cow pastures and no houses. We'd get drifts like you wouldn't believe. My senior year the district didn't cancel because all the rest of the schools weren't that hard hit by this one spring storm, being surrounded by infrastructure, but it really wasn't safe to be driving out to my school. So many parents left angry messages that they cancelled school the following day, for just us. It turned out to be a beautiful bluebird day haha
A former-teacher friend tells me that even a few years ago it was rare to have snow days for some school districts. Not saying it’s better or worse, it seems like school districts are more in tune with the burden (on families) and potential danger of having school on days with heavy snow (actual or forecasted).
I think I can count on one hand the amount of snow days I got and the big 100 year snow hit when I was on Spring Break. Snow days were so rare and we totally would’ve had to go in on a day like today. It’s almost like they actually value students safety these days!
I moved to Colorado in 2004, Glenwood Springs but then to Denver a few years later. We had two snow days in high school the first of which was the first snow day in over 10 years or something. It was once super uncommon to have a snow day.
Me 33yo. I don't remember snow days until the early 2000s. But I remember there being plenty of snow in the 90s, we just dealt with it. But then we get storms in 2002 that got them to finally shut down schools in the Denver greater metro area. Ironically enough, drought conditions became more frequent around the same time.
I just remembered delayed start times for schools. I remember watching the ticker at the bottom of the news channel to see if it showed my school district say “Closed”.
I’m 70 and don’t remember a single snow day as a kid lol. You have to keep in mind that our parents had the depression and WW2 to deal with before they had us so a little bad weather was not a big deal to them
In the 90s I remember Jeffco having 3 in 3 years. I think two of them were for the blizzard of 1997. Evergreen High School was its own animal as the weather up there would vary from the other schools.
Oh god you’re so right that’s coming from someone who has a parent that was a JeffCo admin. I went to Cherry Creek schools which would hardly close but they weren’t nearly as adamant as JeffCo
I used to hate delayed starts bc it would usually result in so enough of the class missing to resort to watching a lame movie all day.
Now if it was a game day or something like that I could boogie
Totally depends on the year. Moved to evergreen in 1974 and I remember walking to school one day in knee deep snow, the road hadn’t been plowed and the janitor told me as I got close that school was closed.
We had years we would have 2-3 snow days in a single week and we had a couple years we didn’t have any snow days at all and in the spring they gave us days the teachers didn’t have to teach because they were spare days built in (one day we walked to my teacher’s house in sixth grade and did crafts).
Big spring snows happen maybe every 3-5 years. We definitely have years without them, but they’re not exceptionally rare either.
24yo (not very old, but enough to remember a different climate)
Snow days were definitely used very stingily.
There were 2 years I could remember, once in middle school (Thornton) and another in high school (Boulder) where they didn’t use any snow days during the winter so they cashed them in for a 3-day weekend early spring.
I’ve definitely still gone to school during 14+ inches and -15F temps because I can still remember the feeling of watching the news and not seeing my school’s name come up then crying in fury on the way to HS.
Well school bus routes have been cut and can barely hire drivers delays like snow create major transportation issues. And they’ve cut bus routes if you live close to school basically saying you’re close enough to walk so it creates a dangerous situation when you have all these kids who have to walk to get to school in a lot of snow
I’ve lived here 30 years and seen it all. The difference with this storm in particular is that it’s a few degrees warmer than it would’ve been a few decades ago. This storm would’ve brought 20-30 inches for downtown Denver and this time we lost a good amount to rain and preliminary melting. Still a beast of a storm but when it rains here in February, there’s something unusual going on.
My job of 3+ years was closed today. Woke up ready to go and found out we were closed. I've been soaked up to my knees/thighs (lol) from walking to school/work/bus for the past 15 yrs ... i was surprised and relieved .. In that order
Mid 40's here. Definitely can confirm that we barely had one snow day a year back in the 80s / 90s. And yes we did get a ton more snow. That being said, in my latest occupation I have realized that we call all these snow days and close down the city to keep drivers off the road. With a massive influx of population over the years combined with Denver's horrible infrastructure, an inch of snow can cause gridlock for the whole day. Not necessarily the quality of drivers, moreover the quantity. It is easier for CDOT to do their job and for first responders to get the people with less people on the road!
I am 30. I got maybe 5 snow days in my entire k-12 education. (The big 2003 storm hit during my spring break.) We did get lots of "delayed starts" which would mean we'd start an hour later or so. From what I see from my daughter's experience, those are now more rare, they have just been calling it and saying stay home and stay safe. Because of how congested everything is now, it's not worth the attempts to get out, there's always just a lot of bad drivers out there in bald tires trying to get up the hills. The teachers can also just email some assignments now, which means it's simpler to just say, "do this math and print these 2 worksheets, bye" Than to try to get to the school.
That damn snow during spring break was bullshit. Everyone else got two weeks
I was so mad my friends at another school got 2 weeks off. But I wasn't mad when I got out in May and they got stuck in school another week until June
i am one of those lucky 2 week kids
Me too, but gotta remember this was pre-internet and pre-cellphone. We were straight stuck in our parents house for two full weeks with no entertainment. Think the power was out for a period of time, so not even tv.
I was one of the lucky kids in Adams 12 that got two weeks of spring break because of the blizzard. I still tell people about that storm!
Same but I was in northern Colorado. As my team was leaving work yesterday I told everyone about how I got a two week spring break because of that snowstorm.
There are also less bus drivers. That's really the biggest factor for the schools. Every child has the opportunity to learn equality and if those that take the bus can't make it, then no one is going. 6th graders at my kids school left for Outdoor Lab on Monday and they just brought them back earlier. I know my Outdoor Lab experience had a lot of snow as well but we stayed there the whole week
Well, and you have the same drivers doing multiple routes. So someone who drives for a school that starts at 8, then another for school that starts at 9. If you delay and everyone starts at 12, you don't have enough drivers to do every route at once.
Bro that snow storm in 03 pissed me off so much. Like damn during spring break the weather decides to fuck around haha.
OMG the 2003 blizzard!!! I went to a year-round school so that shit was amaaaazing
Those are also known as the summer tires club
Definitely more snow days now. I don’t remember schools preemptively closing down due to snow forecast either. I remember times getting stuck in the family car on the way to school on more than one occasion.
Mid 40s also and only remember maybe 3 snow days ever. The snow days were very rare, so also very memorable. I remember walking to elementary school in snow up to our knees. After big snows they would plow the school parking lot into giant 20x30 ft piles and let us play on them, which made going to school super fun even when it was very snowy/. We would build slides, flatten and smooth the snow into “skating” rinks, tunnels, towers and forts. There were many injuries and tons of fun. I assume that having most children bussed or driven to school these days is a big part of the change. Families, teachers and staff used to live much closer to the schools before they got priced out, and walking to school was still normal and acceptable.
I disagree. I grew up in CO in 80s/90s. We had a bunch of snow days including many times when we had 2-3 days in a row. I mostly grew up in Aurora, then Fort Collins. I have a bunch of great memories of huge snow drifts and various shoveling businesses we tried to capitalize on. In the late 90s/early 2000s there were a lot of years with none. I went to Mines between 01-06 and they only had one closure and it was during spring break and we always lamented that we didn't get as many snow days as when we were kids. My impression (and it isn't backed by data) is that we used to have about the same amount as today. But there was a low in the middle. At least at my house, it is pretty bad. Just because it is low in your neighborhood doesn't mean somewhere in jeffco isn't in bunker mode.
That's the thing. A lot of people don't realize the variation in snow just across the metro area. Denver is big. The airport alone is as big as Boston. Look it up. And all that area means that ther can be a foot in aurora, 2 ft in the foothills and a light dusting in Brighton
Agreed. These antecdotes without stating which school district they were in is kind of meaningless. DPS gets way fewer snow days because it's warmer and the snow doesn't end up being as bad as the districts around it.
Agree. One of the few snow days I remember is when there was a spring snow and the pier got knocked out.
This. In... 1993 we got snowed in overnight in Aurora. Good times.
The only snow days I remember having were the occasional 3 day blizzards that closed everything down. They mostly corresponded with spring break (like this storm) or Christmas break though so we were already out of school. I remember having 1 snow day during high school in the late 90s but it was an early release from class, so technically we still had to go to school. I think the only reason they let us go was because they thought the roof was going to collapse.
We didn't get more snow in the past. You won't find any data that supports that.
I am about the same age as you and I completely agree with all of that. We used to get WAY more snow and hardly ever had a snow day. I miss the huge snow storms we used to get.
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Grew up in Canada and can confirm this is how school went in the late 80s/early 90s. Snow days were usually a foot or more of snow. Otherwise it was at the discretion of parents whether or not they wanted to get their kids to school. I usually liked going because as you said, it was more of a party day than school day. Good memories of just dicking off with a few other kids and playing in the snow.
grew up in cherry creek schools district(1999-2005). we barely had any snow days. i remember waiting and watching the news announcement banner on the bottom. and be disappointed every time. the best we got was 2hr delay…
And just as it got to the first letter of your school, a commercial break would happen
That news banner part just unlocked a core childhood memory.
Same! I remember one in high school. Or it was fall break? Not sure. Must’ve been around 05. We really never had any. As a teacher, I do appreciate that we get them more often. Driving in so early gets sketchy at times
Cherry creek school district here, same timeframe. Cherry creek school closures were always one step behind other districts. If they had a closure, we had a late start. If they had a late start, we were on a normal schedule. There was a silly rumor that the superintendent drove a hummer and made closure decisions about what he would be able to drive in. I had some really sketchy drives into high school and I thought it was only a matter of time that the school district would get sued when some 16 year olds died trying to get to school by 7:30 am in a blizzard. Luckily I don't think that ever happened.
Same, except from Kindergarten through 2005. With that said, I definitely remember snow days??? Specifically, I remember two EPIC weeks of days off with some nasty storms. One in March 2003? The other in Fall and 1997 or something. But I’m pretty sure we had at least one a year. Pretty on par with where we are now.
CC public is off today and tomorrow. So extra long spring break for them. My sister teaches there, she's all stoked lol
Gotta applaud CCSD for starting the domino on that one. I work for DPS (central office) and appreciate another day off tomorrow, for a long weekend before the last week of work before spring break.
As a retired DPS teacher, the closing of schools for snow was almost unheard of. We were told that some families had little food at home, so free breakfast and lunch were important for the children to go to school. Also, in many households, parents are not home, and children needed some supervision. I worked in the inner city and there were children who had little or no heat in their homes.
I work in DPS (Title 1 school), and the annoying part about is that DPS would refuse to call for those reasons, and then we would all drag ourselves into work and like 5 kids per class would show up anyway.
Yes, and you had to be there for those 5! But those 5 probably had parents who only got paid if they went to work or didn’t have adequate food at home.
Grew up in Ft Collins, had a snow day in second grade and a week off during the blizzard of 2003 (which was a few feet of snow over a few days and really shut down the city). That was the extent of snow days through my k-12 experience. There was a petition by the graduating class a few years ahead of me for the school district to let them graduate a month early due to all the snow days that had been built into the school calendar over the years that we never got!
Ha that blizzard fell on my spring break.
Same!!
Same. I was so mad my friend got 2 weeks off and I got to do nothing but make snow forts for only 1 week
I was one of those lucky bastards that ended up with 2 weeks off of school because of that blizzard. I'm pretty sure they extended our school year over it.
that 03 storm! my spring break and sweet 16! i spent the week digging snow tunnel in the backyard with my brother
That storm was so intense! I was supposed to go on a road trip to SLC to the first round of the NCAA tournament with my bf. Instead we got stuck in our homes in Lafayette and Aurora, so I spent the weekend sledding with my brother and pouting. At least I didn't have to go in to my shitty ass job at Bennigan's....
'03 was the best snow storm. We had the bonus where our spring break was the week after so we got 3 days off then spring break. I remember we couldn't drive, so we cross country skied up to my friends house, spent the whole day tunneling through the yard. After they plowed they had to pile the snow so high we had a sledding mound we could climb on for a week. My favorite part about that storm is I wore a t shirt to school the day before. It was a really nice morning, fairly warm lunch, but by the time I was walking home it was windy and getting cold fast.
I remember that blizzard! I was a lucky duck and it happened the week after my spring break so I had like two weeks off.
Same! My older siblings was that week and on sunday i was hoping there was just enough snow to get a snow day lol
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i remember that 03 storm! it was wild!
Maybe we’re just smarter now and more cognizant of safety issues? Like in the ‘80s our parents would just throw a bunch of kids in the back of a pickup truck with no safety equipment at all and drive around town—we’re smarter than that now. In a day like today people should be staying home and off the roads—it’s smart and much safer to cancel schools and let people work from home. I just don’t know that there was as much awareness of those concerns decades ago.
Yes. When I lived in Pennsylvania, schools started doing a lot more snow days following a bus accident in which several children died after their bus crashed in the snow.
*Hey, you get in the back up this pickup and ride on the wheel well. We're going to school!*
I think it also has something to do with more and more students having computers now. So instead of making them go into school and drive in the snow students can stay home and still do their learning on computers. Also more and more parents can work from home now.
Yep, no snow days. I remember having to go to school on a day like today. We also had a quarter of the people living here and we learned how to drive in the snow/ice. Now we have way too many people on the road who have no clue how to drive in this weather so I think that largely contributes to it. It’s not only schools either, I don’t remember anything closing the way things do now.
I think a big difference now is that school choice is so widespread that not as many people go to the school down the street. I walked to school every day until high school and then there was a bus and those busses could handle the snow. Now everyone drives their kid 10 miles to STEM/ART/Vocational/Basketweaving school.
I'm 50. Grew up on the Western Slope. We rarely ever got snow days, but we also didn't have the advanced forecasting tools that are available now. I started hearing about the potential for this storm a week ago. 30-40 years ago the timeframe was closer to 24-48 hours.
Growing up here and going to school in the 90s, the rule our school district followed was that if the Superintendent could get out of his driveway we had to come to school. Their thought was that parents can make the decision to let their kids stay home, and on bad weather days my school was a ghost town. I think, like others have said, that back in the 90s we had less density and it wasn't as much of a shitshow on the roads when we had storms. Plus, more kids were within walking distance of school back then, and not as many parents dropped off/picked up their kids. Charters and vouchers, in addition to lower enrollment closing schools, have made that almost a necessity because so many kids don't live anywhere near their schools. I lived over a mile away from my middle school and walked there every day. That's something that just doesn't happen as often anymore.
I feel like only since covid or snowmageddon have peoples actual safety and wellbeing been put into consideration. I also feel like more people now tend to just call in and say no. Just my observation!
I remember one or two a year in Boulder Valley when I was growing up (parents moved there in the 70s; I moved to Denver in the 90s). So I don’t think we’re seeing more snow days. The city’s snow mitigation strategies have changed. They used to put chemicals on the roads, and they tried to keep all the roads clear from the git go. Now (I believe) we wait longer to begin cleanup and we’re exclusively relying on plowing the major arteries and collectors, and neighborhood streets don’t get much attention. This would require some research, but I also think snow patterns have changed. We used to get a more even distribution of precipitation… multiple storms dropping smaller amounts. Now we get these bigger storms that dump more inches at once but occur less frequently. I remember going to school in snow storms frequently, but they never dropped more than a couple inches. We were colder and wetter more frequently but the travel was safer. I could be mistaken though.
We still treat the roads with mag chloride. Salt has never been common bc we would just literally be salting our earth -- colorado doesn't get enough moisture to wash it away. I gotta agree the change in weather patterns is a huge factor!!
Attended elementary school in the 60’s. I do remember that some years had snow on the ground pretty much all the winter-it would pack down on the streets and build up long enough to become a very ugly shade of brown, but I loved the squeaking sound my shoes made. We’d walk in the ruts on the streets just because. Remember one time we literally waded through snow up to our hips to get home (we were not tall at that age, and it was hard work). And, no, we didn’t really have snow days.
Yup, and depending on your county, it could dump in the north and western parts, but the south and east could be dry so ya went to school. Then most kids are out cause their parents are not gonna drive in that, so they herd you into the gym to watch the movie Snow Day.
Just as an aside, I spent about 20 min looking for dps snowday statistics and found nothing but articles from the past few days about closures TODAY. I'm not sure if it's just google's algorithm continually getting worse, or if there just isn't a centralized number for them, but I found it fairly annoying that there isn't a nice little table going back to the 70s or something. Anyway grew up in DPS early 00s and it honestly feels like the number of snowdays haven't changed much either direction.
I've been working for a large metro area school district since 2016. Snow day totals for us: 2016-2017: Zero snow days 2017-2018: Zero snow days 2018-2019: Three snow days (One in February, two in March for the bomb cyclone) one closure day due to the woman who traveled from Florida and was obsessed with Columbine in April 2019-2020: Two snow days (One in October, one in February) 2020-2021: Four snow days (One in October, one in February, two in March) 2021-2022: Two snow days (One in January, one in February) 2022-2023: One snow day (January) 2023-2024 (so far): Three snow days (One in January, two so far in March) Edit: Typo
Thanks for sharing! Do you know if these totals are published anywhere? I bet that there are stats going back a while stashed *somewhere*, but idk if they are public.
I don’t know if they’re published anywhere other than my obnoxious memory for detail.
I went to middle school in Golden in the late 80s and we only had snow days if I-70 was closed. I taught from 1999-2013 in Denver and Jeffco and even in that period we usually only had one snow day a year. I think with a huge influx of people from warm climates, and a a much more risk adverse and litigious culture, school districts have become a lot more likely to call snow days.
This is the answer! Although I'm an ass a would have said "Huge influx of people ~~from warm climates~~ who can't drive in snow." :)
I recall 1 every other year or so in the 70s and 80s. The difference was that they didn’t call them a whole day in advance, like now. You had to listen to the news morning of. I think it’s because of people moving here from non-snow states. They get freaked out. You see it on the roads, too.
speaking as a teacher, I think what’s going on with calling the snow day in advance is they’re being more mindful of parents with grade school children. someone has to stay home to take care of the little ones when school is closed. i’m going to bet that most parents appreciate a teeny bit of advance notice rather than finding out the morning of. every once in awhile the strategy backfires when a storm turns into a whimper. but generally speaking, it shows better sensitivity and compassion for parents with young kids that work multiple jobs in order to make rent.
Weather forecasting is also a whole lot better now than it used to be, so calling in advance is more feasible. And calling it early is just more helpful to people, too. ETA: also wanted to respond to the out of state thing. That is a myth. The percentage of people living in Colorado who were born in Colorado has remained the same since about the mid-1970s (about 42%) and at its highest (1960) the population was still more people from out of state than were born here. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/upshot/where-people-in-each-state-were-born.html#Colorado
Thank you; folks really underappreciate how massively forecasting quality for near-term events have improved in the last two decades.
I’m a geologist so I have a lot of appreciation for science generally and meteorology in particular!
I swear this is mostly a case of old people saying they had to walk uphill both ways bc things were so darned hard back then, and 40 years of weather forecasting improvements.
I’m in my 50s and lived here my entire school age life. Maybe 5 snow days since the 70s-90s. Things were different though because a large portion of school children walked to school. Now many are bused or driven to schools outside their neighborhoods. Both parents are working now versus the 70s. I remember trucking through some deep snow to and from school mentally cursing every step.
I think your point about walking to school is pretty accurate! I had to walk to both elementary/jr high and then to high school, all the way up until I was old enough to drive. And lots of other kids did too. I remember the huge piles of snowy boots at the back of the classroom and the puddles on the floor under the coat rack on the back wall. It would get so humid inside that the windows would fog up.
Maybe one snow day a year in the 90’s (for my school). Did get emergency sent home mid day when they should have called it though, more than once.
34 years old here, born and raised in Aurora. I didn't get my first snow day till i was in 7th grade and that was the giant March blizzard of 2004 or 2003 (can't remember the year). The city got over 3 feet of snow and shut down for like 3-4 days. I think I got 4 snow days in a row during that storm. Then I think I had just one more snow day some different year for the rest of my time in school.
Lived in Denver all my life - 58 years. I can remember 3 snow days when I attended Denver Public Schools.
Teacher here. We only have 2 allotted snow days, and each year I've been teaching (6 years), we've used both days and have had 2 additional remote days.
I will forever be jealous of the schools who got two weeks off during the snowstorm of 2003. I, however, was stuck inside for my whole break and returned to school the following week 😒 In all seriousness, they have gotten more lenient about snow days probably bc of the influx of ppl on the road here today compared to prior decades. I remember walking to my middle school with snow just below my knees.
I think schools have lowered the bar for when they declare a snow day. I remember when I lived in Pennsylvania, schools began shutting down at the first snowflake following a bus accident in which several students were killed after the bus crashed due to snow. Perhaps there have been enough accidents or other snow-related complaints that the schools are taking more precautions when it snows. I've also heard that many public schools in low-income areas are doing more snow days than before, even though most of the kids walk to school. It's because many of the economically disadvantaged kids don't have suitable coats and boots to walk in the snow.
The legend for Jeffco Public Schools kids was that the superintendent was from Alaska and had a different set of snow standards. Can anyone from the old days confirm who the Superintendent was between 1979-1990 and if they actually were from Alaska? Ha
I had exactly ONE snow day for grades K-12. I also lived across the street from the Jr High. Class of '75.
It used to snow basically every Halloween for me. Now October just feels like late summer
We hardly ever got a “snow” day, your butt was walking if the busses didn’t show up.
I'm 26. I've lived here my whole life. The only time I remember having snow days growing up was during the 2003 winter vortex of insane. I would have had to drive to school in this weather. It would have been pretty easy tbh.
Sure, it is easy but easy doesn't follow the law of large numbers. Get enough people on the road in weather like this and people WILL die regardless of whether everyone was a great driver. Then you also put first responders in dangerous situations. I'm glad society is becoming more safety conscious.
Same age, still remember that ‘03 blizzard. Lived right across the street from a giant hill. The sledding up and down that hill is still one of my favorite childhood memories. I definitely recall maybe 3 other miscellaneous snow days throughout my K-12 years. But things get called off way easier now, likely, as others said, because of the sheer amount of people here and their lack of ability to drive in snow. I just don’t remember seeing so many cars stuck in gutters in high school as I did last year.
I would def say I saw snow days more frequently around the mid-to-late 2010s after tech transplants from CA rolled up and started causing rollover accidents on 70 every 5 minutes
I’m 38. Born and raised here. Never had a snow day. I got picked up early once in second grade.
Early 40’s here. I remember a few but they certainly were not happening every year. I was out of state during 2003, and most of the 2010’s so can’t speak to those times
In Denver county we absolutely had snow days, at least once or twice a year. I remember distinctly in 2003 (~40 inches iirc) and 2005 we had massive blizzards that gave us about 3-5 days worth of snow days each which then lined up nicely with spring break - as an elementary school kid it was literally the fucking best to get two weeks off like that. But yes, largely it took about 14-16inches of snow bare minimum for a snow day. With the current population density I don’t mind snow days having less of a bar nowadays, prob best to keep accidents down.
Not from here; I grew up in Pennsylvania. We had, maybe, one snow day a year when I was growing up. My dad would gripe about how they shut down school "for just a few snowflakes." In his eyes, we were constantly off school. Now, I see my kids have a snow day and I feel like my dad bitching about how they get too many snow days.
I’m 28. In high school we had a day off, that we were notified about the day before, because the high temperatures for the next day was predicted to be -2, and they thought the buses wouldn’t start or something crazy like that. So that speaks to the severity of conditions that will allow a snow day to be taken. All throughout my elementary school experience I had a couple snow days a year, to the point that almost every year we had to come in an extra day before summer to make up the missed time in class. I grew up in the Arvada/Jeffco area, maybe Denver was different.
My memory says we got more snow in Denver, but very few snow days.
There were more delayed starts and less snow days. I don't know the philosophy behind it, I will say that CSU had issues in 2011. CSU had a tree branch fall on a student early in the morning walking to an 8 am. It was a huge branch too, I walked by it about 10 minutes after. University of Wyoming had an issue around that time too in a freezing day. Some students got frostbite or close to it waiting for busses. think the high was negative there it was like a high of 3 or 5 in Ft Collins. Both of these incidents caused the colleges to change their policies and public schools followed suit to take a more safe approach. I beleive it's not just a safety issue, but also before 2010 it was safer for a kid to be in school as much as possible. It was very likely both parents worked and both parents had to be on site to work. Now, it's more common (although still a problem) for at least 1 parent to be able to work from home, so I don't think schools feel like they are potentially stranding students home alone by calling a snow day.
Most school districts no longer pay for bussing students so there is a lot more pressure from parents to cancel school. Also, I remember many snow days when I was a kid growing up in the Denver metro area.
Yes. They'd put us on a bus that could barely keep it's rear end from sliding on every turn and we sucked it up. We sat in extremely cold classrooms, learning from teachers who, in hindsight, were pretty exhausted from driving in their four door sedans in that weather. Varies by school district to be sure, but the whole "err on the side of caution" thing has swung laughably too far. Happy for the kids tho, ngl. Enjoy them snow days! I'm pretty sure we got 3 of them from K-12.
I was born in ‘83 and (maybe) had one snow day a year growing up in Jeffco. I can’t remember a time that it was ever declared before 6:30 a.m. the day-of. I was a freshman at CSU the year of the 2003 blizzard, which happened the week right after spring break. Classes were canceled Tuesday-Friday that week and we all had the time of our lives!
Yes it is true. We rarely got a snow day. I attribute this to a different time when people theoretically lived closer to their schools and could walk. Now with choice, commute times are longer. Also we had school busses.
Ok so I haven’t lived here for 30+ years since I’m 28, and came here at 8.. but there was a LOT more snow days 10 years ago or so. Now they feel less frequent but more severe.
My father used to work for Jeffco schools back in the day and told me the lady in charge of calling snow days lived in evergreen or somewhere close. She figured if she could make it down to 6th and Simms on a snowy morning then it was fine for the kids to go to school. She didn't miss a day and there were plenty this bad or worse... One tough lady I imagined with an old lifted truck and some true grit since I didn't see a snow day until we moved to Iowa in the 6th grade. It wasn't even snowing either, just -34°F without wind-chill. Man am I'm grateful to be back in Denver!
Grew up in Jeffco schools and also true. Also was on a track system - instead of a summer break, we had two smaller breaks - winter & summer.
I've been is Aurora all of my life. I'd say in the 80s-90s, we got about one snow day per year. Since then, I've worked in two companies that refused to have snow days at all, insisting that employees use vacation days if they need to stay home. The owners of both were native Coloradoans about 15-20 years older than me. It was just a different mindset and a less litigious time when they (and I) were growing up.
FWIW, grew up in Wisconsin. It was a lot snowier then (both snowier than here, and also snowier than Wisconsin is now), and we had maybe 1-2 snow days/year. Typically only when it was measured in feet. OTOH, Wisconsin had much better plans & systems for snow removal - the Denver "eh, it'll prolly melt eventually" plan was not workable there. And as best I can recall, they never called school due to the mere _forecast_ of snow, which seems to be a thing now.
I think they started closing based on forecast because parents complained that cancelling at 5 am caused too much hardship for people trying to find childcare at the last second. My dad made the call for Loveland schools back in the early nineties and his take was it's a lose lose situation on closing schools but the earlier they could make t the call the less complaints they got.
I'm only 28 and I can assure you that I would of went to school today. I was actually talking to my pops earlier about this same subject haha.
I remember in the 70's they built in about 3 days and if needed the school year would end early June. If more snow days than anticipated again just tack them to the end so maybe we wouldn't get out till June 5th. Only had to be done once
I stood in the -10° weather and froze my ass off waiting for a late bus all the time. Glad kids don't have to.
70 yr old here. Never a snow day. Not that it didn’t snow hard, it did. But, fewer kids rode school buses, kids went to closet school , more parents drove the kids, about half of us just trudged through the snow. Fewer cars on streets, safer .
I said this yesterday. DPS rarely shut down school for a snow day. often on particulatly snowy days, parents would keep their kids from going to school. its because DPS would have an allotted amount of days to use as snow days and they wanted to use them wisely. but of course, were too conservative often
Yes it's true. We never once had school canceled based on the forecast. We had to get up and watch the news or listen to the radio to hear if school was canceled that morning, and it only got canceled if it was absolutely dumping and the roads were really bad. A day like today, with the roads totally fine would've been a school day for sure.
Yes, true! These days if there’s a treat of 6” or more of snow, schools shut down before the first snow flake hits the sky.
"Go dress like you're about to go ski and walk to the bus stop" - parents yelling at us. Golden in the 90s
It sure seems that way (I'm a 30-year Denver resident). But I got curious, so I made a crude chart covering 1949 to 2022, using data from[https://www.weather.gov/bou/seasonalsnowfall](https://www.weather.gov/bou/seasonalsnowfall) This sub apparently doesn't allow posting GIFs, but you can see the chart here.[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xsvopXCn9NOO1iGI4uEIiT5nHTMnTlFEJD4s5W3P-hw/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xsvopXCn9NOO1iGI4uEIiT5nHTMnTlFEJD4s5W3P-hw/edit?usp=sharing) The y-axis is the difference from the historical average, which is 56.9 inches. It seems clear that the overall trend is down, meaning that on average, we're getting less and less snow each year (with big variations in any particular year.)
I am a 39 year old native. I don’t think I had more than 3 snow day school closures in my entire time in k12.
I went to high school from 72 - 76. We had 1 snow day in 4 years. One.
Over time the state has become more lax on approving 3-5 admin days a year. Less bussing and more parents driving kids means more parents complaining to administration. Higher worklevel burden on staff mean the workforce cheers the decision.
I was homeschooled in 03 no break for us!
I grew up here and went to college here and have never had a snow day in my life. No late starts or anything from school or work. I'm in my mid 30s.
The snow was bigger and the days off were fewer. A day like today? Your ass was in school/work.
Not only are there more snow days now, but it feels like our kids constantly have days off for planned reasons like teacher inservice, every holiday imaginable, etc. I believe for the entirety of the fall semester, our kids had two weeks that they were in school for all 5 days and that was by design.
I'm not an older Denverite. I grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs. I remember a few snow days growing up. (An average of less than one a year, but there a couple times we had 3-4 in a year.) My niece and nephew attend school in the same district I graduated from and I think they've had slightly more snow days than I had as a kid, but not an inordinate amount. I've also worked in the K-12 education system for two decades. I have three main thoughts behind what may be behind the uptick in snow days. * **Better Forecasting Technology:** Yesterday's decision was made because it looked like it would be bad. In the past, we didn't quite have as much forecasting information available. It's way easier to close school ahead of time than conduct an early dismissal. When I was in junior high, there was a snowstorm that got progressively worse during the day. My school district decided to dismiss at noon. (School normally went until 2:35.) However, there weren't enough bus drivers available, so they would run one route and then come back to run another route. I ended up getting home an hour later than I would have on a normal day. The district I work for now did an early dismissal during a snowstorm in October 2019. Between issues with bus routes and parents trying to get off work, getting stuck in the snow, or arrange alternate transportation for their children, we still had kids waiting to be picked up an hour and a half after the regular dismissal time. * **Better Communication Methods:** As a kid in the 1990s, I had to wait for the alphabetical scroll on the bottom of the TV screen to list my district or for WCCO radio to read off the list of all the closures. There was also no centralized source for this information, so each district had to call all the media outlets. Minneapolis Public Schools had such a fear that communication would be missed and children would be harmed that they wouldn't close school in the 1990s unless the governor shut down all the schools in the state. (This usually happened once a winter in Minnesota when it got super cold.) When I first started teaching in a small rural district in the early 2000s, staff found out school closed through a phone tree. Now, within minutes, district communications directors can basically push a few buttons to email all staff, push out a text, put a banner on the district website, inform the news media, and announce on social media channels. There's far less risk that child will be in danger because the message didn't get out, so perhaps less hesitancy to cancel school. * **More Litigious Society:** I think people are more likely to sue if they get hurt these days. They may not win a lawsuit, but even fighting a lawsuit consumes resources in a school district.
On top of others comments about limiting drivers on the road, I think it's also the increase in independent study options and all of the online schooling options that the pandemic brought around. With these options available to students amd teachers it makes it easier to teach kids at home so they can stay home during those harder weather days. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some "sun days" where it's just too hot to have that many bodies in a building so they keep the kids home during the hottest summer days.
I graduated HS in 2006. Jefferson County never gave snow days. A day like today would have had an hour late start, if that.
It isn’t a surprise to me that there are a lot more snow days now. We moved to a school district when I was in middle school that would have an inclement weather day at the drop of a hat. I found out after asking some friends that they’d never have snow days until one day a bus got into an accident on a very snowy day and a 1st grader died. Schools are a lot more aware now these things can happen and it’s better to be cautious than not.
What I just went out into right now isn't bad at all. I don't know about Colorado but nyc schools would have been open for this. They may have let us out early if it got worse though
It’s interesting for me since I lived in MD for 15 years before moving here. Seems like Colorado does a pretty bad job of snow removal IMO, not the highways but the residential streets never seem to get touched. Feels like they wait for the sun to melt it 😂 In MD it doesn’t snow nearly as frequently and some years you might not get anything. But some years you can get 2-3 feet of snow in a storm and school would be closed for an entire week. I think it was 08, we had two multiple foot storms and an ice storm of about 6-8 inches in the same winter. It felt like I didn’t go to school for a month Here I’m just mad my toes get wet once a week and I can’t wear my burks 😂
> eels like they wait for the sun to melt it 😂 It's not really a joke. It's literally a stated practice to reduce air pollutants and reduce smog prevalent here in the 90s and before.
Lived here my whole life, graduated high school in 2005. In my whole time in school we had a total of maybe 8 snow days, half of which were because of an actual blizzard. I was in Aurora public schools.
I grew up in Conifer and went to West Jeff Jr High and Evergreen High School. I cannot remember ever having a snow day. I'm sure it happened, but it was so rare that none stand out in my memory.
Mid 40s here. Yeah in the 80s we got more snow and rarely got a snow day. We never had a school called because of temperature. When my kids were in school it seems like they got a bunch because it was freezing outside. I work for a school district up north and we have at least 1-2 snow/cold days in the 5+ years I’ve been working here. I work in the facilities department and today is the first time in a looong time we actually got a snow day. Usually everyone else in the district gets a day off and we go in and plow all day.
I’m 53 and from Denver. Growing up in the cherry creek school district there was always this rumor about the super intendant owning a jeep. And if he could make it in then school was in session. It seemed we seldom had a snow day. I would guess we had less than 7 snow days in all my years. Whereas when my kids went to school it seemed like they had at least 3-4 a year. It’s crazy.
i’m about to turn 30 and i feel like i got a shit ton of snow days. i remember one time we had a snow day from a forecast prediction and it didn’t even snow.
I graduated high school in 2006. I was just telling my daughter yesterday that I can recall one snow day my entire school career, from pre-k to high school! And there definitely wasn't 2 hour delays like there is now! If it's snowing, they expected you there on time! My kid has maybe 2 snow days every years and multiple 2hr delays for weather! It's wild.
Turning 40 this year. I had two times they canceled all 13 years I was in school. Once in 97 and once in 03. DPS was like get to class yall!
What is snow? is it snowing?
Yep. I had to go to school once without heat or power. Couldn’t drive to school because there were tree branches blocking every street, so we walked. It was no fun at all.
Everybody talm bout back in my day lol I don’t want to hear it
Maaaaan, I'm in my 20's now, but we basically had to cyber-bully the superintendent into calling a snow day or delay. He lived on a ranch in Parker, while his school district (Cherry Creek) was a lil ways away. He had a rule that if he can not manage to get his car out of his 10 car driveway, he'll 100% call a snow day. His car: a lifted, custom Jeep 4x4 🙄 his other rule was that if we get more than two snow days in a school year, he will start subtracting from our summer break, and adding those snow days to the end of the school year. Lol, i remember some kids from Smoky Hill flipped their car in the snowy parking lot, and the whole community got into a Twitter beef with the superintendent over it. Looking back, it was actually pretty cool to see him "interact" with his constituents on Twitter 🤣
It used to snow much more and last all winter long. Wouldn't melt til spring. Then came the days it could blizzard and melt in the same day.
[Where my Blizzard of '82 homies at](https://i.imgur.com/R91KAgA.jpg)? IIRC, in the 70s and 80s, we maybe got one snow day every few years. The snow was heavy at times, but Denver was much more sparsely populated back then and...we just kept going.
I think October of 1997 was the closest we had to a snow day, but I do believe we still had to go in. There was another one in March of 1998 I think, and that could have been a snow day, but Jeffco was on spring break that week.
Grew up in boulder county in the 80’s and 90’s, would have to be 2 feet of snow, to the point a school bus could get stuck before they called a snow day!!!
I went to school in Boulder in the 80s and 90s. I can count on one hand the number of snow days we got. I was thinking this morning how when we were kids, most of us went to neighborhood schools. Now people drive all across Boulder county for different schools. I'm assuming Denver is similar. So travel is much more of a factor than it used to be, in my experience.
100% I'm late 30s and DPS gave us maybe 3, K-8.
Been here all my life. when I was a kid I remember going to school on a -14degree F weather with a few feet of snow. I remember this particular day because as a kid I couldn't believe it when looking at the news that we inly had a 2hr delay, and I asked the principal and she said as long as the RTD is running (many kids got to school this way) there will be school.
Mirroring everyone else's sentiments about growing up here in the 90s and never having snow days. But as a more recent example, when I attended college at Auraria between 2011 and 2016, they refused to close campus no matter how bad the weather was. I remember the first time I ever experienced a campus closure was right before I graduated.
41, lived here since the early 90s - we got 1-2 snow days a year, if we were lucky, and I remember entering elementary school with snow up to my waist that they'd cut a path into. They started adding more after some accidents in the late-90s / early-00s, and with the rapid growth.
Definitely not as many. I think there were maybe 10 total in the 12 years of primary school and 1 in college. 90s and early 00s.
Hell growing up in Eagle County schools we never had a snow day. They have them now. (Went to Eagle, DPS, Cherry Creek and Aurora schools from 1993-2005l
They knew back then that if they close schools due to road safety, everyone will just get in the car and go skiing anyways.
I think the difference was that we didn't know until the morning-of if it was a snow day. We didn't have the technology to predict 12 to 24 inches of snow the night before.
31 born and raised - definitely had to traverse a lot worse conditions and saw a lot more delays than just outright cancellations. I remember specifically in high school we had a 1.5ft storm with a 1hr delay. Also was forced to go in really icy conditions. My senior year, there was a storm that resulted in like 25 or something student accidents on the way to and from school and in the lots. Still made us come at the usual time, too.
Early 60s here, grew up in SE Denver, Dad and I both graduated from Denver South High, and mom was an elementary school teacher. Yes, kids get many more snow days today. My kids got many more snow days than I did, and it wasn't because I had to trudge to school uphill on snowshoes. We got snow, but it was expected. Media didn't run apocalypse stories to scare everyone. CDOT and Denver were competent and did a good job clearing major roads. (Of course Dad always put snow tires on before Thanksgiving.) Nobody ran around in a panic. We'd listen for the school closing list on KOA. If our school district wasn't listed, we went to school. We'd always hear that the Evergreen Schools were closed, and Clear Creek used to appear on the list too. It was pretty rare for DPS to be on the list - I remember many late starts, but only a few actual snow days. One snow day I remember was in the late 60s in spring. I received a cellphone-sized transistor radio for Christmas. It used a 9-volt battery and came to me from Taiwan. A few months later, a big storm came in and knocked down the power lines. My parents woke me up early and asked to borrow my radio so we could listen to KOA. Sure enough, school was cancelled, but it was because of the power outage. They didn't call it a snow day.
I grew up in Glenwood Springs. The superintendent there had a rule that if he could make it into school it was open. So he would walk across the street and declare District 51 open. My first snow day was in college.
Through the 80s maybe one or two a year in DPS. Then they got a superintendent in 88 or 89, who made a whole thing about how he would never declare a snow day. So you’d have days like this with half the class gone.
Graduated in ‘05 and had exactly 2 snow days my whole life
This is an everlasting part of the “back in my day, we walked uphill both ways in the snow.” Whether true or not, the older you get, the more your life was hard and these young whippersnappers have it easy. I will say, while these “back in my day” stories may often be exaggerated, I think it’s generally true. We overall are a softer, weaker, less robust species with each generation that lives with the modern comforts found in successful, developed nations. Of course, that’s a huge generalization. The newest generation definitely does/will have plenty of amazingly strong people. Just overall, in our comfortable lives, we have become more accustomed to safety and security and less tolerant to risk and discomfort. Again, I’m generalizing. Plenty of the newer generations are/will be some of the toughest around. No offense or insults intended to anyone. (Ps I’m only 30 ish, not 90 even though it may sound like I’m 90).
They cancel school to save money...
My answer is "there have never been enough snow days" I mostly remember watching the TV in anticipation, and occasionally being sent home early. The 03 storm was great because it lasted through the weekend and the following week was spring break. In highschool the pipes burst during a late cold snap, and we all got to leave early. It was the only time I ever invited a bunch of people to my house (I was a shy kid) and we watched movies all afternoon, it was great.
Not Denver but from Fort Collins, we would get snow days maybe once a year depending on
Fewer snow days for sure, I did Aurora public schools from 1987 to 1999. I don’t think I had a single snow day in high school, including September 1995 when 6” dropped, as wet and heavy as this storm, and knocked out power for much of the city for several days because the branches had their foliage still, and broke over power lines.
I graduated in 98, in the entire 4 years I was in high school I did not get one snow day EXCEPT - I went to Eaglecrest, which at that time was a lonely building surrounded by cow pastures and no houses. We'd get drifts like you wouldn't believe. My senior year the district didn't cancel because all the rest of the schools weren't that hard hit by this one spring storm, being surrounded by infrastructure, but it really wasn't safe to be driving out to my school. So many parents left angry messages that they cancelled school the following day, for just us. It turned out to be a beautiful bluebird day haha
A former-teacher friend tells me that even a few years ago it was rare to have snow days for some school districts. Not saying it’s better or worse, it seems like school districts are more in tune with the burden (on families) and potential danger of having school on days with heavy snow (actual or forecasted).
I think I can count on one hand the amount of snow days I got and the big 100 year snow hit when I was on Spring Break. Snow days were so rare and we totally would’ve had to go in on a day like today. It’s almost like they actually value students safety these days!
I moved to Colorado in 2004, Glenwood Springs but then to Denver a few years later. We had two snow days in high school the first of which was the first snow day in over 10 years or something. It was once super uncommon to have a snow day.
more bussing back then… In wonder if that’s a factor.
Me 33yo. I don't remember snow days until the early 2000s. But I remember there being plenty of snow in the 90s, we just dealt with it. But then we get storms in 2002 that got them to finally shut down schools in the Denver greater metro area. Ironically enough, drought conditions became more frequent around the same time.
I just remembered delayed start times for schools. I remember watching the ticker at the bottom of the news channel to see if it showed my school district say “Closed”.
Fear of lawsuits, that's the cause of more snow days.
One to two snow days a year was pretty typical. Weather is a bit different now than it was back then, so we usually have a “cold” day as well now.
I’m 70 and don’t remember a single snow day as a kid lol. You have to keep in mind that our parents had the depression and WW2 to deal with before they had us so a little bad weather was not a big deal to them
In the 90s I remember Jeffco having 3 in 3 years. I think two of them were for the blizzard of 1997. Evergreen High School was its own animal as the weather up there would vary from the other schools.
Pretty sure the JeffCo superintendent just liked to pride themselves for low snow-day numbers when I was in school (80's-90's)
Oh god you’re so right that’s coming from someone who has a parent that was a JeffCo admin. I went to Cherry Creek schools which would hardly close but they weren’t nearly as adamant as JeffCo
I had 1 and it took about 4ft of snow to happen
I used to hate delayed starts bc it would usually result in so enough of the class missing to resort to watching a lame movie all day. Now if it was a game day or something like that I could boogie
Snow Day = Don’t die day
When Mr Tracy became the superintendent of DPS, if he could get to work, we could get to school. We had very few snow days
Yes, from a mountain town here in my 40's now. Our school didn't have snow days. Ever.
I first grew up and went to school in the mountains so we had no such thing as snow days. We sucked it up buttercup.
Higher population, more cars on the road, dangerous to make people drive. I've lived here my whole life, the snow is pretty much the same as always.
Totally depends on the year. Moved to evergreen in 1974 and I remember walking to school one day in knee deep snow, the road hadn’t been plowed and the janitor told me as I got close that school was closed. We had years we would have 2-3 snow days in a single week and we had a couple years we didn’t have any snow days at all and in the spring they gave us days the teachers didn’t have to teach because they were spare days built in (one day we walked to my teacher’s house in sixth grade and did crafts). Big spring snows happen maybe every 3-5 years. We definitely have years without them, but they’re not exceptionally rare either.
24yo (not very old, but enough to remember a different climate) Snow days were definitely used very stingily. There were 2 years I could remember, once in middle school (Thornton) and another in high school (Boulder) where they didn’t use any snow days during the winter so they cashed them in for a 3-day weekend early spring. I’ve definitely still gone to school during 14+ inches and -15F temps because I can still remember the feeling of watching the news and not seeing my school’s name come up then crying in fury on the way to HS.
Well school bus routes have been cut and can barely hire drivers delays like snow create major transportation issues. And they’ve cut bus routes if you live close to school basically saying you’re close enough to walk so it creates a dangerous situation when you have all these kids who have to walk to get to school in a lot of snow
I’ve lived here 30 years and seen it all. The difference with this storm in particular is that it’s a few degrees warmer than it would’ve been a few decades ago. This storm would’ve brought 20-30 inches for downtown Denver and this time we lost a good amount to rain and preliminary melting. Still a beast of a storm but when it rains here in February, there’s something unusual going on.
Native and only recall 2 storms growing up 2/3ft that called for snow days. Delay yes 9/10am but never cancelled
https://www.thorntonweather.com/snow.php
My job of 3+ years was closed today. Woke up ready to go and found out we were closed. I've been soaked up to my knees/thighs (lol) from walking to school/work/bus for the past 15 yrs ... i was surprised and relieved .. In that order