Manual snow day calculator
What if
Any school day
Snow day–%
Late start–%
Enter a ZIP code above
Will there be a snow day?
- An estimate from the public forecast. Your school district makes the call.
Why the sign says so
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Snow
How many inches are forecast, against what your area usually handles.
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Timing
Whether it falls overnight or stops early enough for plows to finish.
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Ice
Freezing rain, which closes schools at far smaller amounts than snow.
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Cold
The wind chill while children wait for the bus.
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Wind
Gusts strong enough to drift snow back over cleared roads.
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Alerts
Winter warnings and advisories from the National Weather Service.
Pick the kind of district you want to try the numbers on.
Your own numbers through the same model as the calculator. Not a forecast.
Set the weather yourself and see what the sign would say. No forecast, no ZIP code.
What this is for
- You have a forecast from somewhere else, such as a local TV meteorologist, and want to know what it means for school.
- You want to see why timing matters: move the same snowfall from overnight to the evening before and watch the numbers drop.
- There is no snow in the forecast and you want to see how the calculator behaves when there is.
The sliders feed the same model as the snow day calculator. Snow and ice are spread evenly over the hours you choose; everything else in the night is calm. Weather alerts are left out, because they come from forecasters and cannot be set by hand. Every threshold is on the How it works page.
The address of this page keeps your numbers, so you can share a scenario with the link.