Snow crash

I’m told this doesn’t happen very often, and when it does it isn’t usually this bad. Today, it snowed several inches in Dallas and the surrounding areas. This caused the expected knot of traffic, accidents, people doing generally stupid things that work great on dry pavement and terribly under low-friction conditions. The snow was heavy, the flakes large and lumbering. It coated everything, and melted on the pavement leaving large puddles of cold, clear water.

Students at SMU were, quite literally, frolicking in the snow. Snowball fights, snowmen, laughing, running, snow angels . . . good times! Jodi and I grabbed lunch at our new favorite sandwich shoppe near campus, and I finished prepping my lecture for today’s class. That was all before SMU officially (finally!) closed the campus at 3pm. We made it home before all the crazy commuters could hit the road.

So after an insane week, I am finally ahead again on my lectures (kinda by accident). I even got to shuffle around some crazy physics ideas with a few of our grad students before we escaped for home today. Getting home without being killed was nice, though! And when Jodi saw all that snow on our yard, she went straight outside and started making a snowman.

It didn’t take me two minutes to joined her. We avoided some yellow snow left by a neighbors dog, and kept building up the snowman. The snow was a little too heavy to work with; this led to the snowman collapsing from weight at several points. It was a little taller than we intended, but Jodi’s finishing touches with the coal and the carrot (yes, we had those on hand) was great!

OK, so we had the first snow day in over a decade. Fun, but I’m glad this doesn’t happen too often here in Dallas!