MORGANTOWN — The last of Hurricane Ida spiraled out over north-central West Virginia on Wednesday, and Monongalia County’s school buildings weathered the storm well – even if district officials did cancel class as a precaution.
“We were worried that we’d get in a situation where we wouldn’t be able to get our kids home because of flash-flooding,” Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
Campbell initially placed county schools on a two-hour delay, but after talking to meteorologists and bus drivers who were out assessing the roads, he made the call to keep everyone home.
“At one point, it was setting up so the storm would be centered right over Morgantown,” the superintendent said.
“You never want to put your students and staffers at risk.”
Save for a brief power outage at Brookhaven Elementary in the morning, Mon’s other buildings escaped risk at the height of the rain – which was at its peak Tuesday night through Wednesday.
Close to two inches of rain came down in the county from midnight to early afternoon, MECCA 911 Director Jim Smith reported.
“We were lucky,” Campbell said. “No leaky roofs, no flooded gyms.”
“And they got the electricity back on pretty quick at Brookhaven so we didn’t lose any food in the kitchen.”
While Mon’s district has pre-prepared inclement weather lesson plans and an enhanced capability to go remote courtesy of the pandemic, Wednesday, Campbell said, was a day off – no more, no less.
“Yep, it was a ‘rain day,’ ” he said. “It was, ‘No homework, no Chromebooks, just stay dry.’”
For now, Mon is expected to stay dry for the rest of the week.
AccuWeather is calling for party sunny skies with highs in the 70s through the weekend.
Look for a sunny high of 80 in College Park, Md., on Saturday for WVU’s football opener on the road against the Terrapins of Maryland.
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