Walking home from school in one of the storms
We live in a very interesting place. One week could be very uneventful and even mundane and the next week could be crazy. We’ve had one of those scenarios for this post. If you’ve followed our tales of Togiak this year, you’ll know that our weather has been quite active. We’ve had multiple storms that have forced school to close early or even close for the entire day. This week we had a few of those storms role in. The first storm arrived very early Monday morning. The wind blew hard enough to shake the building and wake people up. What made things worse was that we had just received some fresh snowfall a day or so earlier. This wind picked up this snow and drifted it all over the place creating very limited visibility (about 50 feet). This was very much the definition of a “blizzard”. This caused school to be canceled, mainly because no one could get out of their house.
This snow drifted over in 1 day
The storm died down late Monday evening. We resumed school Tuesday as normal, however, it was anything but normal. Apparently, the storm drifted the roads so badly downtown that no one could make it to the school. We had to delay the start of school by an hour to give time for the city plows to clear the roads. The school busses picked up an hour later than usual and started to follow the plows. Unfortunately, the snow was so deep that it took hours for the plows to make a one-lane road from down town to the school. The bus was full of students and was stuck behind the plow for two hours. School started at 10:00, but most people didn’t get there until 11:30-12:00. On that note, the cooks were unable to get to school and start making lunch so that was delayed also. After the road was clear there was a one-lane tunnel that was six feet deep and about 50-75 feet long.
Throughout the duration of this storm and events at school, I (Tim) was in Anchorage at a technology conference. I went to the Alaska Society for Technology in Education (ASTE) conference. I was really excited to go, since this is right down my alley. The highlight of this conference for me was attending the Google Workshop for educators. It was an all day meeting showing how to use all of the Google tools and specifically how to use them in an education setting. I have to say that I am very much a Google fan, especially now. There are so many things you can do with Google in the classroom. Togiak is in the middle of an Internet upgrade, which means that maybe next year we’ll be able to incorporate more Internet tools, like Google. I also got to attend a few Apple sponsored events, like iPhone/Pad app creating and using iPads in the classroom. In those classes we got to play around with and create some textbooks for the iPad. Having an opportunity to play around with Apple’s new iPad textbooks I have to say that I think they are fantastic. Interactive textbooks are definitely the future, however, right now the price cost of purchasing sets of iPads to use them doesn’t make it worth it just yet, but I think they will come down eventually.
Storm number two rolled in Friday around noon. It was just like storm number one that hit Monday, except not quite as powerful. Friday after school the students had to wait for the busses because they were once again following the city plows up the road. All the staff and students were told to follow the busses out because the plows were going to lead the way so the bus could make it back downtown. Kaitlyn and I had some 4-wheeler troubles that morning and had gotten a ride from a coworker. We had planned on just walking home, however, the storm was pretty crazy, so we decided to wait at Heather Jeffer's house to see if the storm would die down a little. We were at Heather's for about 2 hours, but the storm didn’t really get any less harsh. If we were going to have to walk home anyway we thought it would be better to walk home before the sun went down, so Kaitlyn and I put all our stuff on and hoofed it home. The wind blew and we had to climb over a few drifts, but we made it home. At the point of my writing this post (Sunday afternoon) the roads have yet to be cleared.
