In recent weeks, State College has fallen victim to bitter cold fronts and treacherous snow. Events such as these carry various effects towards State High and the entire State College community, including students, teachers, and grounds staff.
The total snowfall on Jan. 26 was as high as 13.2 inches, with surrounding areas, including Port Matilda, reaching up to 15.5 inches. These accumulations were out of the ordinary for the townships, as the mean inches of snow for January in the area is 11.3 inches. Yet, these unexpected occurrences may become more and more common given the state of the environment.
State College Area School District Science Coordinator and Park Forest Middle School science teacher, Karianne Chessario, has insight into this, earning a degree in Meteorology from Penn State University in 1998. Following her graduation, she worked in the weather and earth science fields.
Utilizing her extensive knowledge and experience in weather, especially winter weather, she explained the conditions State College has been experiencing.
“Well, in more recent years, because the poles are warming a lot faster than the rest of the earth, we’ve kind of destabilized the jet stream,” Chessario said. “All that means is that it allows the air from the North Pole, that really, really cold arctic air mass, to reach us in Pennsylvania and create situations like we’ve been encountering the last few weeks.”
On the academic side of things, the district has been somewhat disoriented following countless delays, cancellations, and student disinterest. At least that’s what it may seem. According to senior Bryce Dwyer, the alterations to the regular schedule haven’t had a strong impact.
“I would say as a senior that I take it more as time to relax,” Dwyer said.
As well as students, teachers haven’t been deterred by the changes.
“When there’s delays or cancellations, we’ve actually worked pretty diligently to kind of pivot and shift, to adapt the curriculum so that the students still get what they need, even when we have a shortened day or when we miss a day. So overall, I feel like our ability to be able to adjust the plan hasn’t really created any huge lapses in the student experience,” Chessario said regarding the staff’s ability to adapt to the weather changes.
Behind the scenes, there’s a third party working diligently to ensure State High is safe and prepared for weather occurrences like the ones seen recently. State High’s Physical Plant, led by Russell Armstrong II, manages the buildings of the entire district. This includes building maintenance and inspections, making sure everything is operating properly in a combined building space of nearly 1.6 million square feet.
“This last event we had…the Saturday before…There was evening prep. We were up on roofs, checking units, making sure that heating was okay so that we didn’t have to get up in the snow. We take every precaution we can to make sure that nothing freezes. That’s our biggest priority, the top of the buildings,” Armstrong said in relation to preparations made for the snowstorm hitting on Jan. 25.
With a unified effort from all facets of the State High community, the district appears undeterred in the face of Mother Nature.
