The start of 2025 has brought sub-freezing temperatures, three inclement weather days, and a rare two-hour delay. On January 6th, the day students were due to return from winter break, there was a snow day and the following was a two-hour delay. Recently, students got a five-day weekend with Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and two sub-zero temperature days.
This long period of subfreezing temperatures is a nationwide phenomenon that is causing shutdowns across Central Ohio. Westerville City Schools’ policy on calamity days is utilized for unsafe road conditions or temperatures below -15 degrees Fahrenheit including wind chill.
For some teachers, snow days are negatively affecting learning. Jessica Bey, a chemistry teacher, said, “Chemistry can’t be done at home. I can’t put anything onto Schoology [learning platform]. I can’t send home hydrochloric acid [because] parents frown upon that.”
In Bey’s class, things run on a schedule and now she has to cancel some of their lab work so that they can finish stoichiometry before spring break.
Another effect of the cold temperatures is at home for some. Subfreezing temperatures can cause things such as burst pipes. Erin Morckel, biology and environmental science teacher, has to keep up with her animals to make sure they can get through the winter. She keeps around 150 chickens on her farm as well as 30 sheep.
“We have to hand-carry all of the chickens from the pasture into the [their] hoop houses,” Morckel said. “We carry six at a time upside down and it takes a long time, but that keeps them protected.”
Morckel has also struggled with her sheep lambing, which is when they give birth. “Some [had] lambs on the negative 15-degree days, so we had to do lots of monitoring out there,” she said. “We took little heated blankets out to keep them warm [and] our barn is so drafty so we put up blankets to cover all of the spots that the wind gets in.”
All of this cold weather has been caused by recent cold fronts. A cold front refers to when a cold air mass replaces a warmer one.
The cold weather can also pose issues to health such as frostbite. Frostbite can happen in any temperature below freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit) and can present as feeling cold and sore, pins and needles, or numbness.
Frostbite can be avoided by bundling up and wearing gloves as well as avoiding prolonged exposure to the cold. This is also an important time for people to make sure they are allowing their cars to heat up and keeping their gas tanks more than halfway full to increase the longevity of their vehicles.
