Day 6-no school

   January 10-Those worries from the night before were well-founded.  We awoke to conditions just as bad as the night before and it did not get better all day long.  The snow fell and the wind blew mercilessly.  I got up early to check the web to see what the chances were that the girls' school would be open.  The Icelandic highway department reported that the road by Bifröst was "impassable," so I told Sally there was no need to wake up the kids.  Around 8am she saw kids start to collect near the bus, which stays parked on campus over night, and then suddenly disperse.  It turns out that the school waited until then to finally cancel school for the day, because they thought there might be a chance the weather would turn around.  The way the school principal described it to me, it sounds a lot like the situation you see with schools in Colorado.  If a principal decides to cancel school and then an hour later the sun comes out, they get criticized, but if they don't cancel school and the weather stays rotten, they also get criticized, so he waited that long to see what would happen.  I am glad I did not know about the school's website until later, or I might have gotten the girls up and around for naught as well!  Speaking of checking the weather, I know that there are some weather nuts (like me) who might find this interesting: check out http://www.vegagerdin.is/english/road-conditions-and-weather/the-entire-country/west1.html and http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/areas/faxafloi/#station=31985 to see how the Icelandic highway department and meteorology service presents its observations and forecasts and compare it to the way its done in the Colorado and by the National Weather Service.

   So, the day turned into a lazy, pajama-wearing, knitting day around the house, not only for us, but for most of the people on campus, the best I can figure.  There were some vehicles that decided to brave the entrance to the university and then the highway, but a high percentage of them got stuck or turned around and came back.  Also, I did not see any of the schoolkids take advantage of the snow day to go play outside.  It was plain miserable! 

    I don't really know if the snow fell most of the day, but the weather stations around us showed the wind was constantly over 30 mph and gusted to over 50 mph on multiple occasions, so the ground blizzard was pretty horrible. Unfortunately, the people who had lived in our apartment previously had forgotten to lock the top of the French doors into the frame, and the wind, which was blowing directly at the doors, managed to push the tops of door inward enough that snow occasionally blew into the living room!  When we went to bed, the wind and snow was about as bad as it had been the night before and, yet again, we worried that school at Varmaland would be cancelled for the second day in a row.