By Daniel Krieger
Everyone loves snow days and cold days. They are free days off of school to relax. But what would happen if we didn’t have cold days?
Sure, we would get less days off, but perhaps we really don’t need them, for the most part. Recently, East had three days off of school due to the weather – partially the snow storm, and also the extreme temperatures.
The important part about cold days is that it’s not about the actual temperature, rather it is about the wind chill. Wind makes the outside feel colder than it actually is because as the air molecules move past us, they take some of our body heat with us. Therefore, it feels cold. The faster the wind, the more heat a person loses.
The Williamsville Central School District closes school when the weather predictions state that it will feel negative twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit or lower. This is including wind chill. At this temperature, people can get frostbite within minutes. And as January of 2019 came to a close, many people in the United States did because of the extreme cold that blew across the nation.
The Midwest has faced the most dire circumstances with places reaching deep into the negatives without even considering the effects of wind chill. Certain cities have dealt with the wind chill getting as low as negative fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The death toll has reached two dozen, with doctors seeing more cases of frostbite than they have in their entire career.
Many of those who have gotten frostbite had other reasons for getting it, such as age, with the young and the old being the most susceptible.
This is why cold days are so necessary for the Williamsville Central School District. It’s not just high schoolers; there’s elementary students too. They are incredibly susceptible to frostbite and could face serious health issues from the extreme temperatures.
And even teenagers aren’t immune to the biting wind, with one of those who died being an eighteen year-old college student.
Even though the district provides transportation to and from school on the buses, many students still choose to walk in the winter. Without the proper winter gear, which most students don’t wear to and from school, the cold can cause frostbite and even be lethal.
Even for the students who take the buses, they often have to wait outside for their bus to arrive. This can take longer than expected, especially when there are other issues, such as a lot of snow, as was the case with these past three days off.
While the temperatures in Williamsville were not as drastic as those across the country, they were still dangerous and unsafe to students.
