Pennsylvania Snow Day Predictor

Pennsylvania requires either 180 days, or hours: 900 for kindergarten through grade 6 and 990 for grades 7 to 12, as the district chooses.

The state forgives no days; districts are expected to build make-up days into the calendar for closures beyond any Flexible Instructional Days.

A district with a PDE accepted plan can turn up to five closure days a year, including snow days, into Flexible Instructional Days that count as school days; they can be online, offline or both.

A weather delay or early dismissal still counts as instructional time; one for any other reason does not.

All 490 in the state, by ZIP, with a page of their own for 382, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Central Bucks. Every page carries the district’s own snow record and the odds for its next three school mornings.

A typical Pennsylvania district sees about 2.9 weekday mornings a winter with 2 inches of new snow or more, and 1.1 with 4 inches or more, counted on weekdays from December 1 through March 31 at each district’s nearest NOAA weather station over ten winters. The snowiest districts in the table see several times that.

Three school mornings, as far as the National Weather Service hourly forecast reaches. Weekends and the district’s winter break are skipped, so a Friday storm is read for Monday’s buses.

It reads the National Weather Service forecast for your ZIP through the night and the bus hours, adds winter alerts and the Winter Storm Severity Index, and measures the snow against what counts as a big morning for your district. The state rules come from the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the state code.