Tag: storms

Some good news, for once

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

The Indiana state Senate, in a rare moment of sanity, has defanged the grotesque HB 1134, removing the vast majority of what made it so offensive, including the requirement that teachers post daily lesson plans for the entire year by either June 30 or August 1 of each year, depending on which version of the bill you were looking at. It appears to have been watered down to a vague suggestion that school districts create curriculum advisory committees that parents can be on, which I’d be willing to bet most of them already have, and which one way or another is not an especially onerous change. I did enjoy this bit from the article, however:

Dawn Lang, a Fishers mom of three kids, said she likes the part of the bill that will provide her access to her school’s learning management system. She said parents are frustrated and want more transparency in their children’s education. 

Dawn Lang lives in Fishers, which is a wealthy suburb of Indianapolis, and I absolutely one hundred percent guarantee you that she already has full access to her school’s LMS. Every LMS I’ve ever seen allows parental access. My kids’ parents can see every assignment and can see their kids’ attendance and grades in real-time, and can even set things up to get alerts when I update grades. And this isn’t exactly new technology; it’s been available in my district for easily half a decade if not longer than that. She has the access; she’s either too dumb to be able to use it, in which case the law isn’t going to help her, or she’s lying, in which case the law is written specifically for people like her.

What does this mean for me? Good question! This law was going to guarantee that I wasn’t going to return to teaching next year, and while it’s always possible that some sort of fuckery will take place (the House assumes no one’s watching, restores the old language, and bounces it back to the Senate during the reconciliation process, the Senate passes the original, fucked bill, and Holcomb signs it) I don’t know that I think it’s especially likely. This year’s legislative Armageddon at least appears to be, against all expectations, dead. Will there be more fuckery next year? Yep. Sure will, and this bill wasn’t the only reason I want to leave; recall that my administrators have been fired as well, for example, and, oh, every single other thing about this year. But it means that there’s not a “have to quit by” date attached to my current career, and that I can at least take some time and see if there are other school-related jobs that I might want next year. It’s gone from an impending crisis to something that is still very much a big deal but no longer runs any risk of actual unemployment. I’ll take it.

In other news, we did have school today, although literally all but one of the other school districts within shouting distance were closed. And, honestly, as it turns out, it was a touch on the risky side but I think it was the right call. My drive home was kinda dodgy, but you can’t live through too many Indiana winters without learning how to handle “kinda dodgy,” and as the middle schools are the last to dismiss in my district, I have to assume the high schools and primary centers were able to get everybody home without any particular drama. Hell, attendance was even pretty good today, and most of the day was, unbelievably, calm. Again, I’ll take it.

Sky go boom

On By Luther M. SilerIn life6 Comments

Nothing too terrifying at the moment, but the FutureTrack has that bleb in the corner moving northeast and toward us, and after about 6:45 has us under red or orange for most of the evening. So I’m tossing up a quick note now because if I don’t the power is guaranteed to go out.

WordPress is showing signs of “improving” their editor again, too, so not only will the power go out but this is not going to look right somehow. I’m also psyched about that.

… and, 20 minutes of staring at the screen later, apparently not much happened today. I continue to be pleased with how the school year is going, so it’s absolutely time to rearrange everything again and see if I can wreck it all.

More later. I can’t tell if that’s a tornado siren going off or if someone is using a leaf blower during a rainstorm for some reason, and I feel like I ought to go find out.

Yikes

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments
Photo by Jason Wagner.

Midwesterners are occasionally not very smart people.

I was starting to get ready to put the boy to bed last night when suddenly the civil defense alarms started going off. Normally the alarms don’t happen until after the National Weather Service has already kicked out some watches and warnings, and I hadn’t seen anything, so I posted a quick message to Facebook asking if anybody knew anything and we went about our business. It took maybe another 10 minutes for my phone to start blowing up, and even when it did, it was all “radar indicates rotation” type of stuff and no actual someone sees a tornado types of warnings. I feel like now that they’re doing “radar indicates rotation” as a threat level, we need a new word for that. Tornado warning always meant someone has actually seen a funnel cloud to me and I don’t know how seriously to treat your radar tornadoes.

Anyway, we didn’t go hide in the bathtub, and we didn’t go into the basement. I’ve been living in tornado-prone areas for 3/4 of my life and I can count the number of times I’ve actually taken shelter during tornado warnings on one hand. I have never in all that time seen one with my own eyes, and the last time we were having tornado warnings I was literally outside taking video on my phone because the clouds were cool.

I am not alone in this, mind you. This is a Midwestern thing. We are used to this shit– if anything, too used to this shit. By the time the warnings were really starting to show up, it was barely even raining at my house any longer, so we didn’t go anywhere.

So, uh, that building in that picture up there is maybe a five-minute drive from my house. It used to be a day care– not my son’s day care, but we’ve tried to get him in there a couple of times because it’s more convenient to where we live than anywhere else we’ve installed him. And it’s, uh, gone now, because tornado. Luckily said tornado was at 8:30 on a Sunday night so the building was deserted.

Maybe next time we’ll go hang out in the basement for five minutes.

Snowpocalypse 2016, round 2

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography5 Comments

I recognize that I basically post the same four pictures every time we get a blizzard around here.  They’re still fun so I’m gonna keep doing it.  🙂 

Note how the fence is basically a vertical wall of snow at this point.   

   

Snowpocalypse 2016

On By Luther M. SilerIn PhotographyLeave a comment

2nd snow day in a row, this one for basically every school in northern Indiana but one at the moment, and no one in my family attends that one stalwart school.

This is the lilac bush next to my back door, taken from inside the house, because the bush is now blocking the door:

More later; I’m going to give the neighborhood half an hour to wake up and then go clear the driveway again, because there’s a berm at the foot of the driveway and my wife still has to go to work.

In which I shill

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReviewsLeave a comment

In accordance with prophecy, it’s -20 degrees outside and I’m at home.  I have had one opportunity for a five-day work week in 2015, and during that week I was sick for two days.  Tomorrow morning it is expected to be colder, and while there are going to be less issues with precipitation (we’re also getting lots of blowing lake-effect snow, which is nasty) I think colder than twenty below means I’m likely at day one of a four-day weekend right now.  Generally, twenty below is regarded as the magic number.  I think it’ll be a few days before I’m back at work.

Allow me to discuss a website and a mobile app for a moment.  I don’t know what you use for your weather forecasts, but you should be going to Weather Underground.

Screen Shot 2015-02-19 at 7.40.38 AM

(I note that, despite what I just said, the temp for tomorrow morning– shown by the vertical line– is at -17 and not -20.  Nonetheless.)

The critical times for closing school are 6:00 in the morning and 3:00 in the afternoon.  For those of us who care about such things, knowing what the high and low are going to be during the day is actually not terribly relevant, especially since meteorologists don’t know what the words “high” and “low” actually mean.  Elsewhere on this page the low temp for today is listed as -6, a temperature that appears nowhere on the actual forecast for today on the same damn page, but instead happens tomorrow morning.

Note: the “high temperature” for a given day is the warmest it is at any point during that day.  Similarly, the “low temperature” for a given day is the coldest it is at any point during that day.  If meteorologists are using any other definitions for “high” and “low,” they are being stupid and should stop.  Come up with your own words.  “High” and “low” have seven goddamn letters between the two of them and we know what they mean.  Stop being dumb.  I don’t care what good reasons you think you have for defining those words wrong; you’re being dumb and you should stop.  Call your dumb things something else.  “High” and “low” belong to people who speak English.

Anyway.  That’s actually a separate rant.  Back to what I was saying: The important times are 6 AM and 3 PM, because those are bus times, with 6 AM being considerably more important than 3 PM because kids are walking to school and/or standing outside waiting for their buses.  Twenty below goddamn zero is too bloody cold for a little kid to stand outside and wait for the bus even before you get to the part where a lot of them don’t have anything between them and the cold other than a thin hoodie.  Add crappy precipitation that slows the buses down (and sometimes knocks them off the road or keeps them from starting in the first place) and it becomes massively irresponsible on the part of the adults.

Which is why I love the hell out of this graph.  It’s got all the usual sources of error built into it that any weather forecasting model does, of course, but it gives me everything I could possibly need to figure out what a day’s going to be like at a glance.  I have never seen any weather site other than Weather Underground that presents data this cleanly or this usefully– and, looking at it, I’m a little concerned about Tuesday and Friday next week, too.

(Note, by the way, the high and low for next Tuesday.  A low of 13 degrees when it gets down to -1 during that day?  No.  That’s not what that word means.  The low is -1.)

Anyway.  Not only is the site awesome, but they have an app now too, and that includes not only the ability to see that graph but lots of fun radar stuff too. I strongly recommend you check them out.

And now to figure out what I’m doing with myself today.

Uh-oh.

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized9 Comments

Screen Shot 2015-01-31 at 8.33.02 PMGo ahead, count ’em.  That there storm system is four states wide, and heading more or less directly toward me.  Like, due east.  The whole damn thing’s gonna pass over us, and it’ll pick up steam when it goes over the lake.

Tomorrow’s gonna be fun.  I don’t think this is going to eat Monday yet, though, because even if, as predicted, it snows for 24 hours straight, the plows ought to have time to keep the roads clear.  I still bet I have to blow off the driveway three times tomorrow.

Whee!

Woohoo 2!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

74b9b318b4c5287b76a096d4042a0d27School’s been cancelled tomorrow, because it’s supposed to be like ten below zero at 6:00 tomorrow morning, meaning that I can either stay home and work on the book (the responsible choice) or stay home and play video games (the slightly more awesome choice.)  At some point I will probably have to blow off the driveway in astonishingly cold weather, which I could be happier about, but… yeah.  No school!  Whee!

I’ll try and post something actually interesting later tonight.