Michael Smith is an educator in Illinois who had a blog called The Principal’s Page. One of his most popular posts was about the hassle of snow days: For a school administrator, the first snow of the year is always the worst. An inch can cause people to go completely ballistic: The phone rings off the hook at school just as soon as the first snowflake hits the ground (sometimes days in advance… and I’m not kidding). Winter weather crises come in five stages: Stage One — The initial news reports (a week in advance) saying we could get between a single flake and 1 inch of light snow. Stage Two — Sheer panic by the general public that if school is not dismissed, literally thousands of people will die on the streets in car accidents or by starvation (hence the run on stores for food…). Stage Three — School is canceled and everyone survives to go sledding or shopping by 10AM. Stage Four — Later that same winter (after 8 other storms) an actual blizzard drops 29 inches of snow in 30 minutes. Stage Five — Parents call the school, begging the administration not to dismiss because they are sick of having their children at home and they “need to go to work.”