Murfreesboro wrote:I don't know, but I'm grateful that our cold now is more normal for our area, like, 30s.
I know folks from the North can never get over how fearful we Southerners are when it comes to snow and ice. Part of it is that we really don't know how to drive in that stuff. I have known of people dying, actually dying, because of two inches of snow on the roads. Economically, we don't invest in all the equipment--plows, salt, etc.-it takes to clear roads, since we don't get so much snow. I mean, we have some of that stuff, but not nearly as much as the folks in the snow-belt do. I have known of snowy winters around here when TPTB literally ran out of salt for the roads. Since I have never lived farther North than Virginia, I don't know what snow is typically like in the snowier areas, but down here, we usually get ice first, and sometimes, nothing but ice. That makes a difference, too.
You also need to remember that if schools are closed, they might have been closed for the whole county. If you live in a town or city, your streets might be A-OK, but the buses have to run over the rural back roads. Some of them can be quite treacherous. There have been many times when our schools closed here, and the students in town could have gotten around just fine. But those in the rural areas of the county would have been endangered.
There is also an economic consequence to the schools if they stay open, but many of the students stay home. My husband, who teaches in the public schools, can explain this better than I can. But the money for the schools is allocated according to average daily attendance, and if they have a day, or several days, when students just don't come in, their budgets take a hit. This means that in our area, if the county schools close, the city schools (which are a separate system) often close as well. Families who have several children might have one or two in the city schools (grades k-6), and one or two in the county schools (all the high schools and most middle schools). This was true of us when our kids were younger. Often, if some kids in the family are staying home, all of them stay home. That affects the annual daily attendance and, in consequence, the school budget for the next year. So the city will sometimes opt to close even though it doesn't really need to, if the county closes.
I would have thought that school districts would lose money if they did close as opposed to staying open. You do have a point that school districts around here cover entire counties in the more rural areas and there are tons of mountains with lots of deadly twists and turns, while in New York, it's all by town zoning limits. (I actually felt car-sick going around those curves. There's curves in and around New York's hills sure, and I'm not a city girl by any means, I lived in rural upstate New York but their curves can't hold a candle to the mountain curves here...not unless I wanted to pay a visit to the Adirondack's but I'd never been there myself.) The thing is, I guess two inches of snow doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me if the plows can get out and push it off. I would honestly think though that anyone with common sense wouldn't drive like a maniac even if there is just a little snow on the ground, if there is snow, there's bound to be ice as well. Of course, that said, they salt the roads really good in New York, and all the rust you see on the cars up there is evidence of that, because it eats at our cars. (Not only that, but stay off the mountains!)
Now, today I would definitely say would be a good day to close school, but today we also got snow that would be comparable to a New York snow storm. I did hear that our county's school has got chains for their bus's tires, but I haven't heard of anyone actually using them. I think a bus would have an easier time getting through than a car would.
We do actually have plows too and equipment that would take care of the snow. Now I can understand if there aren't any plows or anything to take care of the snow, but there is. I just saw a plow go out today. Now in my state, if the plows can get out, there was school and that was the general rule.
I never got to really travel when i was a kid, so I didn't care. 
