Scott and Erin Farver: December 2008

Erin and I have become amateur meteorologists this past week. We are now quite apt at following high and low pressure systems and predicting weather based on barometric pressure fluctuations.
How, you may ask?
Let us back up a little. This week is the final week of the semester for our students and the last week before our winter break begins. We had to plan extensively for all the little projects, activities and tests which need to be squeezed in before school lets out for 2 weeks and our students forget everything from the first 2 quarters. In order to celebrate the happy thought of being finished with the first half of school, we attended a wonderful Christmas Soiree (gaudy attire a must) with much singing of videoke and making of merry. It was a wonderful way to spend a final Saturday eve in Good Ole Gallup with friends old and new.
Driving home from the party that night, however, the weather took a turn for the worse and it started snowing. Not just snowing, but BLOWING and snowing--real blizzard material. It was quite a mess. We only had to drive a few miles home, but it was slow going. Erin and I were surprised--we really had no idea how severe the weather could get down here in New Mexico. I know when I had thought of New Mexico before coming here, I had pictures of red plateaus roasting in the high desert sun while Wile E. Coyote chased Roadrunner all over. I've been a bit confused not having seen any Acme anvils, but the snow thing really threw me for a loop.
When we got home, Erin and I checked the Weather Channel and saw flashing red warnings, alerting us to severe weather in our area. Suddenly, we were not teachers or even adults anymore--at the sight of the severe weather alerts, Erin and I instantly turned into 8 year or kids hoping for a snow day on Monday. If memory serves me right, I believe there was dancing and chanting in the kitchen. All of the things we needed to accomplish before the end of the quarter vanished as thoughts of lounging in our PJs and watching cartoons all day danced in our heads. We went to bed on Saturday giddy at the prospect of a day off sometime the following week and awoke Sunday to a white-washed world of wonder. There was snow everywhere! No school! We came down hard from our high when we remembered it was only Sunday. All afternoon our meticulous planning went out the window. In its stead lay mountains of data to sift through. Weather reports flowed in from NOAA, TWC, Channel 13 Albuquerque and Facebook (needless to say there was not much weather information on Facebook, but we did spend quite some time there nonetheless). We compared expert predictions and added caveats of our own. "The Weather Channel says it should snow a half-inch by 4am on Monday, but I'm pretty sure we'll get no less than 8 feet."
Our predictions for a day of reprieve failed us as we awoke at 4am on Monday to no snow and no cancellations or even delays. We were down, but not beaten and weather was the topic of discussion in the teacher's lounge that noon. I meticulously discoursed on the precipitation percentage possibilities to my fellow teachers, careful not to use the "S" word for fear of jinxing any chance of a day off. As soon as we returned to Farver's Doppler 8 weather station after school, Erin and I were at it again--plotting potential storm courses online in hopes of being able to click and drag the menacing weather system to the southwest of us right over Gallup. We went to bed with high hopes, as Arizona was pinkish/blue on the radar and that meant precipitation coming our way--well, at least a 40% chance anyways.
I slept little Monday night, waking up every 20 minutes to peek outside or to call the school delay and closing hotline (505-721-2233). Finally at 5:30 we woke up for real and heard the beautiful voice of the random district official telling us of a 2 hour delay! His gruffy baritone resounded sweetly in our ears. We jumped for joy and the joyousness of the joy we felt joyfully going through us was magnificent. Even more so when we found out 25 minutes later there would be no school! Yippee! Back to bed! Snuggle with the cats! A day of no school! Our computer crashed (not because of the snow storm, but perhaps from overuse the night before in trying to predict the storminess) but we were invincible! Not even the 2nd mass loss of data in 2 months could put us in sour spirits. Besides, I had a whole day to fix it (which I did 1001010101101). We figured a Tuesday off of school was enough--we would be ready for school on Wednesday, but the snow that came never stopped and we awoke Wednesday to even higher drifts and not even the need for a delay--pure cancellation. Our mystery friend at the other end of the phone did not seem happy, but we were.
So we lounged, ate pizza, fixed computers and relished a 2 1/2 day work week when word of another storm came. Right now, the weather Wednesday night is not looking good and there is a possibility of lots of "S" and even another "S-day" (still don't want to jinx it). Bad news, we just found out, is that the district only has 3 snow days built in and anything over that needs to be made up at the end of the year. Bummer. I'm sure this won't seem as cool then, but it's sure great now. So great, in fact, I'm going to go watch some Ducktales with my wife right now.

This past weekend was the annual balloon rally in town. Also, our good friend Lauren from Michigan came to visit. Lauren went to CMU with us and worked in the Volunteer Center. She taught in South Korea last year and came to visit us in the Philippines during one of her breaks. She picked a great weekend to visit this time! Our graduate classes were finished for the semester so we were not too busy to hang out, plus there were over 150 balloonists in town!

We had gotten some advice from a friend in town to go to the state park (where the balloons were to lift off) early in the morning, as many balloon pilots were in desperate need of volunteers to help them crew their balloons. We got up early, drove to the park and sure enough, within 3 minutes, a pilot shanghaied us and put us to work on his balloon. For lack of better words, it was very cool--made even cooler by the fact that Erin and Lauren got to go up for a beautiful 1 hour ride while I helped the chase crew track 'em down. It was such a beautiful day and we got some great shots.

We're going back to MI for Christmas and a much needed break. While school is going well for each of us, we both need some time to recover from the first semester of teaching and going to school.