Weather Delays

When I thought of the ways that weather might disrupt this week, I thought it was much more likely on Sunday.  There were possibilities of frozen precipitation, and I thought we might have trouble making it over the mountain--and if conditions were bad in Bristol, Tennessee, I thought it might be possible that church would be canceled.

Instead, it was my first day face to face at Spartanburg Methodist College that has gotten delayed.  There's a huge weather system moving west to east, and because of wind advisories, the Spartanburg public schools closed today.  Spartanburg Methodist College usually closes when the public schools close, but this time, the officials decided to stay open today.  However, faculty were told that we could move today's classes online if we thought that driving conditions were risky.

I hoped that the higher ups would reconsider, and I got up this morning, thinking about whether or not I should move classes online.  After several hours of listening to pouring rain and looking at the radar and the weather forecasts, I decided move my classes online.  I've driven in this kind of rain before, but not at temperatures that hovered at freezing, like today's, and not with the forecast of wind like we're supposed to have later today.

It's strange how even after I made this decision, I kept second guessing myself.  I've worked for so many administrators who do not have a generous spirit when it comes to faculty, so it's hard for me to make a decision like this one without fearing icky circumstances.

But I knew that if I made my way down the mountain and only had a few students in classes, which I thought was likely, I'd be annoyed--and I'd have to repeat information on Thursday.  It made sense to upload the syllabus and set up a Discussion post so that students could write an introduction.  

I'll make good use of this time; I'll finish setting up the course shell for these classes, and I'll get some work done on the Lent Bible study for my internship.  We've got a pot of chili that will be perfect for this weather.  It's good to be off the roads today, for this weather event that is likely to last all day.