An Ode on Snow Days

When I was young, one of the best two-word combinations in the English language was snow day!

When I didn’t have to go to school and could stay in my pajamas and watch tv. When I coaxed myself into bulky pants, jackets, socks and boots—way before fleece, down, and waterproof fabric—and my feet got sopped in five minutes anyway. I found the dusty sled in the garage and hauled it outside with my siblings, and the sled got stuck for the first few runs until the blades were cold and accustomed to doing what they were designed to do. I made snow angels and watched dogs leap through piles of snow higher than they were. I ate snow dribbled with maple syrup, had snowball fights, and built snow men with carrot noses and old scarves around their necks. It felt daring to walk straight down the middle of a street too snowy for cars. Maybe my dad didn’t go to work because his car couldn’t make it to the train station so he played with us on a school day and mom had hot cocoa with marshmallows ready when we came inside with icy fingers and red at the tip of our noses.

But do children even have snow days anymore? Is it just my imagination or are snow days waning?

When my children were young, we still had snow days. I remember a stretch of them when I was on a pre-dawn “call list” to inform other parents that school was cancelled in Ligonier. We had enough snow on this Pennsylvania farm to snowshoe or cross-country ski and ice thick enough to skate on the pond. A friend brought a carriage, hitched it to one of our horses, and we rode across the fields. One winter night with a full moon my husband pulled children up our big hill on the ATV and they sledded down. Our rural school had a tradition whereby everyone got out early on Friday afternoons to go skiing at our local ski resort, and sometimes the snow-making machines were not turned on.

I asked a snow expert.

“From my own experience we haven’t had as many snow days,” said Elizabeth Burakowski, a research assistant professor who studies the effects of climate change on snow at the University of New Hampshire’s Earth Systems Research Center. Instead, her family has had “nor’easter days,” when it rains and power lines are down, or heat days when classrooms are 80 degrees and there’s no air conditioning. “Not as much fun as snow days,” she said.

Burakowski doesn’t have data on snow days in western Pennsylvania; such statistics would be local — by school, district, state, or bus company. But she has lots of data on snow cover in the U.S., and for those of us who love snow, the statistics are depressing. In a 2019 study by Hubbard Brook Research Foundation in Woodstock, Vermont, 17 researchers collected data from weather stations across the northeastern United States, eastern Canada, and the Great Lakes. “Winters in the eastern areas of the northern forest have lost about 21 days of snow cover over the past century,” they concluded. Researchers also saw an increase is “mud days” when the ground is bare and daytime temperatures go above freezing. I can attest to that.

“The Northeast United States is a hotspot for heating in winter,” Burakowski said. Burlington, Vermont is getting warmer fastest, followed by Albany, Georgia; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Concord, New Hampshire.

Snow is important for many reasons other than snow days. According to The National Snow and Ice Data Center, snow helps cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space. It is an insulator that protects tree roots and soil microbes. Snow affects hibernating animals and migratory birds, drinking water and irrigation. Lack of snow can increase forest fires and expand invasive forest pests. Local economies, such as ski resorts, depend on snow.

The list is a lot longer.

Burakowski and her colleagues looked at 29 different climate models to project how much snow we might have by the end of the century. They used two scenarios: high level CO2 emissions in the atmosphere (without the 2015 Paris agreement) and low-levels (maintaining 2021 climate policies). Between 1980 and 2005, the number of snow-covered days in the northeast was 95 days. By 2100, in a low-emissions scenario, the northeast would have 72 days of snow cover, but with higher emissions, only 56 days. In Connecticut, where I had many childhood snow days, we used to get 20-80 days of snow, but with the higher emissions, we’d have no snow at all.

Solastalgia is a word coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht that combines the words solace and algia — or pain — and means the distress caused by environmental changes close to home. That’s the way I feel about our lack of snow on the farm. But it’s more than that. Snow days are one of the wonders of childhood, and I’m sad our youngest generation is missing out on the same joy I had. My generation owes them an apology, but we owe them more than that; we owe them action. Fixing the problem shouldn’t be theirs alone. We are flying down a big hill with obstacles in the way, but it’s not too late to steer our sled in another direction.