Snow Day, as the children say is ‘A Gift from God’. The days in the winter season when extensive snow falls in a short span of time making it difficult to travel and to go out of the houses, and the schools and colleges close due to this reason. Snow is gifted to transform an unattractive and awful place into a beautiful, mesmerizing and scenic beauty; however, it also has to power to turn the daily life of a region into a total nightmare by covering the roads with heaps of snow and slippery pathways.
While half of the world is concerned about global warming and talking about the various problems associated with this phenomenon, which is causing the melting of glaciers and there snow is becoming an uncommon phenomenon. And the other half is covered with so much snow that life becomes a standstill whenever there is heavy snow in these regions. Various places in the United States records an average annual snowfall of as high as 490cm in one season, and Canada and Japan are also not far behind.
Problems associated with Heavy Snowfall:
- Heavy snowfall makes travel difficult and sometimes impossible.
- Disabled and elderly people are restricted to their homes.
- Some of the adverse effects of heavy snowfall are unpredictable fires, power cuts, public transport shut down, educational institutions and business closures, and injuries caused due to frostbites and slippery pathways.
That is when a Snow Day Calculator comes into the rescue. A snow calculator is a software that calculates the snow days an area or region will encounter. It basically works on an algorithm that takes an area’s pin code and other factors such as past snow days, current temperature, forecasted wind chill for the next day, forecasted snow accumulation, probability of precipitation and analyses this data and predicts the snow days to come, which helps the users to plan accordingly.
Earlier people used to predict the weather according to various natural things that are near us, such as:
- If the sky is cloudy in the winter season, then it means that it will be quite cold, however, if dark clouds are visible in different directions and are approaching you, then it is a sign of bad weather and anytime a hailstorm may occur.
- Another prediction factor is observing birds and animals, you can easily predict the snow days if you can observe the movement of birds, which means, if the birds are flying high that indicates a clear sky and if the weather is bad, then birds fly at low altitudes and the animals try to stay close to each other.
- Winds are also an important sign to indicate snow if there are strong winds and the grass is dry, then it means that bad weather is coming.
Kids love the snow day calculator, as they can know in advance that it will be holidays and they will get to spend time at home watching TV, playing outdoors with snowballs and enjoying!
Kids love these holidays because of snow, however, this impacts their studies and the whole session gets upset, the syllabus cannot be finished on time because of these unpredictable holidays. So, schools can take the help of some intelligent weather tools to make the right decision, to call the school off or not.
- School Weather Station
If a school has its own weather station, they can get to know the exact weather conditions, real-time data and plan the things accordingly.
- Weather Map
Another important tool that an educational institution must have is a weather system map so that they can analyse and track the weather conditions in real time. This helps in knowing the current weather conditions in that particular region, and also the conditions that are going to come in the next few hours.
You get to know that where a particular storm or rain is heading, or the current snowfall forecast, i.e. for how many hours the snowfall is going to happen such as 0-5 hours, 5-10 hours and so on. This also predicts the amount of snow that is going to accumulate, such as 5, 8 or 10 inches. And you must check the tool reports as often as you can for the updated forecast.
- Weather Alerts
Another tool used by various organizations is a weather alert system that predicts the snowfall as well as snow days. These automated systems send automatic alerts regarding the condition of weather. These systems also provide customized alerts, as a school in highly populated city will have to send alerts for a small radius, as most of the students will be living nearby, on the other hand, a school in less populated area will have to send alerts in a larger radius, as the students will be coming from far away to attend the school.
The alerts can be sent in the form of SMS, emails and mobile app alerts so that anyone should not miss them.
You can use these calculators on your personal computers or you can even download the appropriate app on your mobile. But keep in mind to download the app relevant to your country, as the majority of the snow day calculators work properly only for Canada and the United States of America.
Several Snow Day calculators are available online to predict the snow days. The success rate of these calculators is not 100% but it is quite accurate most of the time. All you need to do is enter the details required by the calculator and it will analyse all the related factors depending upon your region and will give you a good result.
Nature is always unpredictable. So always make sure to have an emergency plan ready for any situation. Always keep stock of food at your home and keep the right equipment ready. It is also advisable for office and school administrations to carry out mock drills when the weather is clear and sunny, and make sure you don’t get panicked and act instantly. Remember, first Save Yourself, to save others!
