Icy morning means snow day in some districts
Sebastian and Olivia Alvarado go after it outside their house Tuesday morning. They were among the kids who got the day off due to icy roads.
MOSES LAKE - Brothers Andrew and Cooper Kuntz started out by stockpiling their ammunition, but they just couldn't wait. Cooper abandoned his partially completed fort, and snowballs flew across the yard.
"Nothing like a snow day, huh?" their dad Jimmy said.
Actually it wasn't so much the snow, because there wasn't a lot of that. It was the freezing rain that fell before the snow that prompted Moses Lake School District officials to cancel school Wednesday. School was canceled in Ephrata, Warden and Wilson Creek, and at Moses Lake Christian Academy. Classes started two hours late in Soap Lake, Quincy and Othello.
Moses Lake Superintendent Michelle Price said the district's transportation director and assistant director were out driving around the district, testing the bus routes, between 3 and 5 a.m. What they found wasn't bus-friendly, Price said.
"Between the two of them, they ended up in the ditch or sliding nine times," she said. With a forecast for additional freezing rain during the hours the buses would be on the road, district officials made the call to cancel classes, she said. "It appears that a no-school call was the better decision."
Sebastian and Olivia Alvarado didn't build a fort. Olivia just picked snow out of the bushes and started throwing, while Sebastian picked up the remains of her snowballs and threw them back.
Andrew and Cooper had the latest in snowball-making technology, a little plastic device that packed snow into a perfectly round ball. While they stockpiled their snowballs, their dad scooped up snow from the driveway and a little from the street, building a ramp. This was the first time all winter the kids would have a chance to try out the sled and snowboard.
There are some good places to go sledding out at the sand dunes, Jimmy Kuntz said, but Mother Nature needs to provide some snow first. So far she hasn't, so Jimmy Kuntz built his own hill.
The announcement of the school closure posted on the Herald's Facebook page prompted a question from Michael McPherson. "Okay, so the kids get the day off. Does that mean the adults get the day off work too?" Alas, most businesses were open and operating before noon.