Snowstorm Blankets Ithaca

After waking up and seeing several inches of snow covering the ground, many students logged onto the Cornell website to find out if the University was closed. Instead, they found a notice from Stephen T. Golding, executive vice president of finance and administration, notifying the community that Cornell was open and had no intention of closing.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning that remained in effect until 8 p.m. last night due to the unusually wet and heavy snowfall yesterday.
Although Ithaca College also remained open, other surrounding institutions dealt with the unexpected snowstorm differently: Tompkins Cortland Community College and the Ithaca city schools closed down for the day.
TCAT buses remained in full service, although delays were expected because of the poor road conditions. At the Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, only a few of the scheduled flights were canceled.
Although the University was officially open, some professors canceled class. Rachel Ginsburg ’10 received an email yesterday morning notifying her that her writing seminar would be canceled that afternoon because the instructor was unable to get her car out. Ginsburg said, “It was nice not to have to go back out in the snow.”
Erin Hamling’s ’10 soccer class ended early yesterday when the men and women’s varsity lacrosse teams took over the turf field in Bartels because they could not hold outdoor practices.
Kelly Chan ’07 was annoyed to discover that some of the facilities such as Oakenshieds were closed. He said, “It was the exact same thing” that happened during the snowstorm on February 14th. “It was fine for the University to be open, but it should be either open or closed — all or nothing … Not half open.”
In addition, several University events such as the Student Internship Panel, the Climate Neutral Cornell panel and the Middle East Study Abroad information session were postponed.
Many students were surprised to experience such a bad snowstorm one month into spring. Joe Magdovitz ’10 said, “I knew Ithaca had bad weather, but I had no idea there would still be snow in April and the wind was treacherous.”
An additional one to three inches were expected to have accumulated through last night and snow was expected until 2 a.m. Only half an inch of snow is predicted to fall today.
According to weather reports, no snow is expected throughout the remainder of the week. Later in the week, it is supposed to be cloudy and rainy with high temperatures in the 40s until it finally warms up on Friday.