Snowshop Daybury

In the dark depths of early February, where spring break is far and joy is short, there is only cold comfort: the chance for a snow day. But why is the weather so weird, even if unaffected by mood? Seabury’s very own weather expert has the answers. 

When asked about the most recent snow day, faculty member Bill Gollier says, “[We got] two and a half inches. It was terrible. Maybe three . . . There are bands of precipitation . . . Think about the summertime here when you get right underneath a thunderstorm, it can really just pour down rain, like two inches in thirty-five minutes, but a place a mile away can get nothing . . . [we were] close on both ends, we were close to getting nothing. But we were also not very far. If that band from Topeka shifted thirty miles to the east, we would’ve had six, seven inches.”

When asked about Lawrence’s seemingly bad luck, Gollier says, “We do get missed, because everything has to be perfect. A lot of our snowstorms are in the 2-4 inch range. That’s your pretty average Lawrence snow; you get five to six of those a year . . . There’s nothing different about what’s happening. This is how it’s always been. In fact, when Charles Robinson [the first governor of Kansas], was here, the first two winters were so warm, they thought it was a Mediterranean climate . . . It seems like [we’re unlucky] because we live here right now . . . [in] 2009, [we had an] 18 inch snow storm, January 2011, another 12 inch blizzard. Winter 2011/12, we had three storms that dumped like 10 to 11 inches of snow a piece. You remember when you get messed over.”

Sophomore Cole Shumaker thinks more simply. “Snow day good; no snow day bad,” he says. At the end of the day, we can all agree on snow day good.Snowshop Daybury