The holiday season often comes with a whirlwind of beautiful chaos, and this year was no exception. Late 2017 and early 2018 stirred up some incredible weather patterns, and didn’t fall short to impress Texans. The bitter cold, fresh white powder, and frosty fingertips were without a doubt new for many of us.

For the first time in years austinites experienced some real arctic weather. The arctic blasts came through a total of three times, bringing texans a real shock. The cold weather brought along with it a thin blanket of white fluffy flurries and slick ice that covered most parts of Austin in both December and January forcing many schools across Texas to close. These uncommon weather patterns threw off hundreds of people, and spiked speculations about climate change. December 7, New Years Eve, and January 16 all rolled in with a mixture of snow, sleet, and ice, surprising many across Texas.   

“I never would have expected to see one day of snowfall in Austin, let alone three in such a short amount of time,” junior Cade Lovelady said.

The severe weather conditions pushed AISD school officials to close schools in early December and mid January, giving students and staff a cool surprise.

“I spent both days off outside,” Lovelady said. “I wanted to take advantage of the snow we got since it’s such an uncommon occurrence.”

Luckily the two snow days won’t affect students or staff very much as far as scheduling is concerned.

“There are two bad weather days built into the school schedule,” principle Mark Robinson explained. “Because we attend more than the number of minutes required for a school year we will not have to ‘make up’ the days off.”

Although the school closures didn’t affect the number of school days students and staff  have to attend, they did affect some of the discussions going on within classrooms.

“Climate change was one of the first things we talked about after coming back from the snow days, everyone debated about weather it’s a real or not,” Lovelady said.

The hot and controversial topic has become extremely prevalent within the news lately, giving many students the window to develop their own opinions about it.

“It’s definitely a self inflicted issue humans have brought upon themselves, and we are starting to see the effects of it,” junior Jana Kobeissi said.

Since all the crazy weather patterns have hit a little closer to home, students have been given a reason to voice their opinions even more than normal.

“I think the only explanation for all the wonky weather patterns is climate change,” Lovelady said. “There’s so much data to support it, it’s hard for me to understand why anyone would deny it.”

Whether Austin’s new found love for the cold is just a coincidence or straight up science, I think we can all agree that the cold weather is a welcomed change.

“The bad weather days came at such a good time, people get so stressed around the holidays and early in the new year,” Kobeissi said. “It was good to have two days off to just relax and admire the unusually cold weather.”