Meadville is no stranger to harsh winter weather conditions, but this past week has been particularly cold and snowy. The National Weather Service issued both a Winter Weather Advisory and an Extreme Cold Warning, beginning over the weekend and continuing into Tuesday morning. According to data released by the Cleveland National Weather Service on Monday afternoon Crawford county got between six to 12 inches of snow.

For many first-years, this is the first time they have experienced this kind of severe weather. But for Sydney Keller, ’29, who grew up in Crawford County, this kind of weather has been the norm.
“In some ways it’s better, in some ways it’s worse,” Keller said. “Like, we only really got one bad snow storm in November of this past year and now we’re getting the bad ones here at the end of January. When I was growing up, it was kind of more common to see smaller snow storms but more frequently.”

However it is not just the snow that is making this winter weather so daunting — it is also the severe cold temperatures. With the temperatures ranging from minus 12 degrees to 13 degrees over the weekend, this is the coldest January that Crawford County has experienced in over a decade, according to the Hornell Evening Tribune Weather Database.

These harsh weather conditions have made it difficult for many students and faculty members to continue with their typical schedules. On Sunday night an all-campus email from President Ron Cole, ’87, announced that despite the temperatures, classes would continue as usual on Monday. The decision resulted in several professors opting to cancel classes or move online anyway because of the weather. A handful of commuter students, such as Keller, were unable to make it to campus.

“I couldn’t get to campus today because my car and my driveway are kind of buried,” Keller said. “So that’s an issue I’m kind of running into.”

But even for students that don’t have to travel off campus, such as Nyahnna Collins, ’29, who lives in Crawford Hall, the harsh weather and large amounts of snow have been hindering for navigating campus.

“Walking down my stairs from Crawford, it’s like we can barely walk down the stairs,” Collins said. “(We) might as well slide, that’s how much snow there was.”