Buffalo, NY - We know it's going to be dangerously cold overnight and Thursday morning, but how cold does it have to get for schools to close? Talking with school superintendents, the most popular threshold for cancelling school seems to be 20 degrees below with the wind chill.
Ken-Ton already used three snow days during the November snow storm when staff members weren't able to make it in. The district has two snow days left.
"But that isn't so much a factor as safety when we're making the decision," says Ken-Ton Superintendent Dawn Mirand.
Mirand likes to have that decision on whether to have school made by 5 a.m.
"It actually starts around four in the morning. Communicating with transportation. Making sure the buses can be up and running, and they get them all started. Warmed up. We touch base with the town and village highway as well," she says.
Mirand uses sustained temperatures of 20 below with wind chill as her threshold. Buffalo has similar guidelines.
"For wind chill, we start to get very nervous anything around minus 20 to minus 25 below. But with that being said, we could have a minus 15 wind chill factor, but with blowing and drifting snow that's causing poor visibility, there might be snow already on the ground, causing major havoc," says Buffalo Public School Director Transportation Al Diamico.
The decision in Buffalo is usually made by 5:15 in the morning. If the buses weren't used the day before, drivers come in early to start them. And, with so many bus drivers in the district, a late start to wait for warmer temperatures is highly unlikely.
"Some of them have other jobs after their bus routes, and they come back in the afternoon, so a late start would be very, very difficult for a big district like Buffalo," says Diamico.
