Winter storm was hell for some, snow vacation for others

Friday's storm may have caused angst for Utah's commuters, but the school closures it triggered were cause for celebration by others.

The entire Davis County School District canceled classes, giving families an unexpected three-day weekend. Bountiful resident Amanda Chamberlain said her three school-aged children were fine with that.

"Nobody shed any tears about it," Chamberlain said.

Her husband, who works for the school district, got a day off as well, so the whole clan essentially got a "family snow day," Chamberlain said.

"We're just kind of hunkering down and watching the snow come down," she said.

Chamberlain has lived in Bountiful since she was 8 years old, and she can only remember one or two times the northern Utah town, which is no stranger to snow, canceled classes after a storm.

"This is probably the most snow I've seen in a long time," she said. "We don't get snow days very often in Bountiful, so it's kind of a big deal when we do."

According to National Weather Service data, the town with the most snow as of late Friday morning was Elk Ridge in southern Utah County, which had measured 22 inches since the storm hit late Thursday night.

Elk Ridge resident Tracy Lofthouse woke up Friday morning to find his backyard nearly submerged in white powder, with only the top half of his children's slide sticking out. That's not totally out of the norm for the rural town at the base of Loafer Mountain.

"This is the second storm we've had that's dropped over 20 inches," Lofthouse said.

A software developer who commutes to Salt Lake City the rest of the week, Lofthouse works from home every Friday. His kids' school district also had an off day — planned before the snow storm hit — so the snow didn't affect the family's plans too much.

There was a lot of snow that needed to be shoveled out of the driveway, though. "I let the kids do that," Lofthouse said.

On his Twitter account, Lofthouse posted a picture of his children standing in front of their handiwork, a pile of shoveled snow that towered above them.