Lauren Rayman
This past week, northeast Ohio has been hit with snow, rain and freezing cold temperatures. Some areas, including Stow, had six to ten inches of snow dumped on them this past weekend.
A lot of snow fell in a very short amount of time between Saturday and Sunday. Although it slowed down on Sunday, it continued to snow on and off throughout the day and going into Monday.
Monday night, the school district made an all-call announcing a snow day for Tuesday, January 22 due to rigid temperatures and unplowed roads, sidewalks and parking lots throughout Stow, Munroe Falls and other areas.
When they returned to school on Wednesday, many students began to wonder if one day off was enough to get everybody to school safely.
Upon pulling into the parking lot Wednesday morning, students were greeted by huge mounds of snow. At this time on Wednesday, it had also began to rain.
This rain started to not only cause leftover snow that was not plowed to turn into slush, but also started to form some ice in the parking lot. The combination of the slush and ice on the ground made for a very unpleasant walk for teachers and students alike into the building for the day.
Along with the slush and ice, parking in the student lot was limited as soon as students began to arrive at school. Many spots were blocked by the snow that had piled up, but many others were blocked by huge puddles of a combination of water, slush and ice.
Students were not the only ones affected by the poor conditions in the parking lot on Wednesday. Teachers parked in a certain area of the teacher lot were very badly affected too.
The parking lot is designed so that there is a pretty wide aisle in between the teacher and student lots, with aisles that are roped off so people can walk on, but not drive through, connecting the two main lots.
Because of this design, the people who were plowing the snow had very limited space to put it. The majority of the snow ended up surrounding the teacher lot, with some of it pushed against the perimeter of the portion of the student lot not connected to the teacher lot.
Monday night and all day Tuesday, temperatures did not reach much above 20 and 25 degrees. Wednesday, however, temperatures reached almost 45 degrees.
The spike in temperature started to cause the snow mounds pushed up against the parking lots to melt. Since the runoff had no place to go, it started to flood the teacher lot- pretty significantly.
Administration emailed teachers at around 11:00 informing them of the flooding that had started to occur. Many teachers parked in the back corner closest to the student lot opted to move their cars so they would not have to walk through a giant puddle just to leave school.
Not only were their issues with flooding in the student and teacher lots, but there was a significant amount of flooding in the library. There was also a little bit of flooding in the art loft, particularly the ceramics room, and the ceiling continued to leak.
The flooding in the library significantly bad because of the fact that it is carpeted throughout the whole thing. Fans have been placed around the spots where the flooding was the worst and have remained there in hopes of completely drying the carpet.
As for the rest of the snow piles that are still in the parking lot, there really is not much that anyone can do to prevent them from creating puddles in the parking lot. But, hopefully the people responsible for plowing the parking lot can figure out an alternative place for the extra snow so that the parking lot does not become flooded.