Weather Banter - View Single Post - Dudley Schools

Harold Brooks · February 8th 07, 11:58 PM posted to uk.sci.weather

In article om,
says...
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 09:44:47 -0600, Harold Brooks wrote:

What did the weather situation end up being like?

Two reports in "[WR] Dudley, West Midlands" the first at 1144 gives 3-4
cms depth with snow fall starting about 0430. The second at 1548 gives
10cm with continual snow. So that's about 1.5cm/hr. This is day time, a
bit of rock salt, plough down and the traffic will keep the roads clear
without any trouble. 10cm (4") is hardly a heavy snow fall either.

I know that, in our recent ice storm, we were very happy when decisions
to close were made the afternoon before because it allowed us to make
plans much easier than if we had to wait until the morning.

Surely the forecast would tell you that the sensible thing to do is make
plans then not wait until the morning to make them? All you have to do in
the morning is impliment them, or not.

It depends on what the plans are for. I know that I was very happy to
be able to have children not set alarms to get up in the morning and let
them sleep in. Having my teenage daughter asleep rather than awake and
grouchy was worth something.:-) In one case of a group that was going
to have about 250 people gathering on a Friday evening to play
basketball, because of volunteer staffing schedules, it was much each
easier to communicate closure on Thursday afternoon than to wait until
Friday. The message got out to 95+% of the people that afternoon.
There are costs associated with waiting until close to events to cancel
that aren't there if you cancel early. In our local district, school
bus drivers don't have to get up early enough to make their way from
their homes to get their busses if they know the evening before.

It's a fairly classic decision problem: given the costs of missed
events and false alarms, where do you set your threshold for cancelling
an event? Costs of missed events tend to go up as you approach event
time. (Did the word get out to everyone? Did people who need extra time
under normal circumstances begin preparations needlessly?) It's not
always an easy call. In Norman, we've had five days of missed school
this year (I think that's right), which is as many as we've had in the
past decade total. Four were called off the afternoon before. One of
those shouldn't have been, but three were great calls.

I have no idea what I would have done in the Dudley situation, given
that I'm not familiar with the local constraints, but I, for one, wish
such decisions were made earlier more often than they are.

--
Harold Brooks