Health & Fitness
Year in review: Pelham hit by weird weather from October to February
PELHAM — Most would say that this past winter was really warm, but what many don't realize is that we didn't have a single snow day this year.
By Kristina Roksvold and Lindsay McNamara, Staff Editors
PELHAM — Most would say that this past winter was really warm, but what many don’t realize is that we didn’t have a single snow day this year.
This winter was a lot of things. A snowy weekend for kids, a climate demonstration for teachers, and a warm, sunny and beautiful winter to play in the sun all day long.
Find out what's happening in Pelhamwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
A lot people would think that’s a good thing. They would just think, “Oh, what a beautiful winter to go relax in the sun!” But they were too busy playing in the sun to pay attention to the fact that other schools got more days off. Since we haven’t had any snow days, we haven’t had any extra days off from school this year.
In other places, including Connecticut, Illinois and Massachusetts, kids had numerous days off of school due to snow days. We’re sort of even now though. We got the warm weather and they got the days off. But it’s still not fair.
Find out what's happening in Pelhamwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
We should be able to use the days off of school that other states got. We should add them on to our breaks. Even Mrs. Cavalli agrees. Which means that this should be taken seriously, and we should get the snow days we deserve.
“I was kind of disappointed because we didn’t get any snow days,” said Sophia Leung (3L).
Added Erik Roksvold (2C), “I thought it was terrible because we didn’t have any snow days.”
The weather January-March was very warm. But in April the weather was cold and windy. According to “Good Morning America,” ski resorts up north reopened and this was the latest in the year they have ever opened.
“I feel that if the road conditions are unsafe and sidewalks are not clear of snow and ice, we should err on the side of caution and stay home until it’s safe,” said Mrs. Meryeme Gashi, the fifth grade weather teacher. “If there are a large number of days that have to be made up due to storms, I’d rather vacations be shortened instead of staying later in June.”
This year we only had one big snowstorm. But there was a catch: It was in October. October is supposed to be a time for tricking and treating, leaf piles and the last weeks of warm weather. The storm was so bad that some places considered canceling Halloween. A few states even postponed it.
The October storm left thousands of people in the cold and the dark with no electricity. Trees everywhere fell. Power lines broke, and it shook up everybody. We were better prepared for Tropical Storm Irene, and we were hit pretty hard. Some states received more than 20 inches of snow.
“I wasn’t happy because of the bad weather,” said Chloe Catana (3L).
Other than that October blizzard, we only had one other storm. And it hardly hit us. We received about three inches of snow on a Saturday in early December, but it quickly melted away.
According to the National Weather Service, the temperatures in New York dropped a little lower than usual during the winter. But that doesn’t mean that we had snow. The average winter snowfall in New York is 20.6 inches. But this year we only received about a fifth of that—only 4.5 inches. However, we did set a record for the earliest snow storm since before the Civil War. We also won the title for the least snowiest December.
(This story was originally published in the printed year-in-review edition of the Colonial Times.)
