Do you like snow days? If you’re a student or teacher, you probably do. But this school year Maryland has had no snow days! Not one.

Students and teachers find snow days an amazing little gift because they break up the time between winter and spring break. Those unexpected days off give both students and teachers a chance to relax and catch up on any missing school work or any task at home that’s been overlooked for a while.

English teacher Ms. Glenn like most teachers enjoys a surprise snow day. “A snow day gives me time to work on other things around my house and spend an extra day doing something fun like sledding or snowboarding with my own kids.”

The average rate of snowfall in Baltimore is 20 inches each year. But this year we got 1 inch which has not looked like much more than dusting to nothing for most of us. According to Meteorologist Justin Berk of Just In Weather, “The last time we have seen any measurable amount of snow was March 12, 2022.” That’s over a year ago!

El Niño is supposedly what causes warm winters. What is El Niño? El Niño is a buildup of warm water from the Pacific that shifts to the eastern part of the ocean every 3 to 7 years. The net result shifts where many storms form, upper-level winds, and resulting storm pattern in the US during the winter, causing a warmer and snowless winter (“What are El Nino and La Nina).

Kenwood junior Samuel Thorton sees the good and the bad in snow days. “Personally, I love them. Snow days give me a day to just reset myself from going back and forth between school and home constantly everyday nonstop. But at the same time, it also causes some problem because it can cause my class to be behind on other assignments that other classes have already finished,” he shares.

Whether we’ve missed the gift of snow days or not, with Spring right around the corner the 22-23 school year is going to down as the snowless winter.

Sources:

Berk, Justin. “Winter Weather.” Just In Weather. 2022. Web Accessed 12 March 2023.

“What are El Nino and La Nina?”. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 2022. Web Accessed 12 March 2023.