15 Don’t Let It Snow

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Don't Let It Snow Snow (noun). It starts in the clouds when the temperature is lower than 0°C, and then the water vapor turns into ice by going directly from a gas to a solid. Basically, it skips the whole liquid stage (as in rain). It's sort of like skipping ahead a grade in school. NOT ONLY WAS IT supposed to snow tomorrow, there was supposed to be a lot of it. I spun around the room, thinking of everything I knew about snow. First off, it needs to be cold. Check. It was going to be exactly freezing tomorrow. As in all day. That's 0°C or 32°F. And for snow to form, there has to be dirt. Not here on Earth's surface, but up there in the sky. I learned about that from Dr. Caroline. Basically, snow happens when ice crystals form around specks of dirt that are floating in the air. When all of these crystal dirt particles collide, they stick together. And then

they get bigger and bigger until—bam!—they get so heavy they plop down to Earth. And fall on your head. As snowflakes. And there wasn't anything that I could do to stop that from happening. Not unless I got a giant leaf blower or something and I could blow all of the little specks of dirt out of the sky. Then I remembered something else that I had learned from Dr. Caroline. How salt can lower the freezing point of water. So maybe if I sprinkled it on our sidewalk, driveway, and cul-de-sac, the snow would just melt. Mom had gone back to school after dinner, trying to clear out her work, so I raced over to my dad's workbench, which was in the basement. I sprinted down the stairs. "Dad! I've got to talk to you. It's an emergency." Dad told me to stand behind the black tape that marked off the safe zone. He put it down last year after Liam wandered too close to the table saw. Luckily, Dad was paying attention and no one got hurt, but we had to have a big family meeting to talk about safety. He handed me a pair of safety goggles and asked me about the emergency. I told him about how it was supposed to snow. And how it might be hard to get the car out of the driveway in order to go to school to

meet the bus for the field trip. But then I told him about my salt plan. We live on a cul-de sac at the back of our neighborhood, and the plows don't get there sometimes until later. So even though school could be open, it could be challenging to get out of the neighborhood. "I like the way you're thinking, Kate," he said. "But first of all, the weather report doesn't say a hundred percent chance of snow. It's now only at fifty-five percent, so it could go either way. Second of all, we'd need many bags of rock salt to do the job. And I just have one bag in the garage. Even if we could borrow another bag from Elijah's family, two bags wouldn't cut it." He sighed deeply. "Third of all, the salt may prevent ice from forming, but it's not going to stop the snow from falling. We've got snow tires on our cars, though, so if school isn't canceled, we should still be able to get there." I thought about that. "True, and we could even walk to the school bus if we had to," I said. That's because there's a bus stop on Maple Avenue, which always gets plowed, about five blocks away.

"The only problem is that the morning school bus can only take kids as passengers." "Essh." That meant Elijah's mom, our much- needed chaperone, and my mom technically couldn't get on board. And even if my mom could pull some strings as principal, Elijah's mom couldn't, and we needed every single chaperone. "Well, there's no point in salting the street until after the plow has come through. But we can certainly shovel the sidewalk and the driveway, and then salt the ground to keep it from icing over. We have enough salt for that." That's when Liam raced down the stairs, into the basement. "Shoveling? Who's shoveling? I want to shovel!" "You can, Liam," said Dad. "Well," I said, looking outside at the fat milky- white clouds, "you'll have to wait until it snows first." "And since there's only a fifty-five percent chance," Dad added, "it might not." Liam looked at me. "I want to shovel. And I want it to snow. But I also want you to be able to go to the aquarium, Kate." "And don't forget Dad's conference," I said. "Yeah, that too." I looked outside once again, and at the forecast. "Looks like we'll just have to wait and see."

There was just one little problem. Waiting is my least favorite activity.