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Snow Day!
Presently the Philadelphia area is in the middle of a lengthy snowstorm. Some schools are closed, many are still open due to this year’s reliance on virtual learning. Though childless, I am guessing many a parent woke up this morning and just checked their school’s website to see if their child’s school was open or closed. Simple, right? Not so long ago, the method of finding out if you had that magical, glorious snow day was much different.
Ask any Philadelphian adult, at least over the age of 30, how they found out about school closures and I am willing to bet that a certain jingle pops into their head. “KYW…news radio…1060.” It had a very sing-songy quality to it. It was part of the background noise of our childhood and everyone knew it.
Now every school at some point was assigned a snow number. When did this system start? I have no idea but on days when there was a chance of school closures, you would have to listen to the radio as they ran through the list of numbers “535, 536, 537, 540….” and so on. Once they ran through the numbers, they would then repeat the list.
In the town where I grew up, the public school district’s number was maybe about twenty numbers before my parochial school’s number. (They were assigned alphabetically.) So you got your hopes up if say 530 was called, then you were almost guaranteed that 547 would also be called. It was like “okay, fingers crossed, it’s looking good, it’s looking real good.”
Sadly over time I have forgotten what the exact number was for my school. Now the news websites just list everyone by name. While this is much easier, I am sure, there was something nostalgic and wonderful about the moment you heard your number and you could go back to bed because you had a snow day.