6th Grader David Sukhin Invents 100% Accurate Snow Day Calculator

A student invented an online calculator to predict the odds of schools calling snow days -- and in five years, he's never been wrong.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on February 03 2011

Though we adults may be getting sick of shoveling our driveways every day, our children never tire of snow days. After all, for them it means sledding, snowball fights, and mugs of hot chocolate dosed generously with marshmallows.

The trouble for most kids is that it’s impossible to predict when a school will close due to snow. If only they knew, they’d have an extra day to worry about their homework, and wouldn’t need to wake up early to listen to the radio school closure announcements.

Five years ago, New Jersey 6th grader David Sukhin came up with a solution to the snow day prediction problem. He built an online calculator with a custom algorithm that can be used to predict whether or not a particular school will close for a snowstorm.

Though he won’t reveal all the secrets behind his predictive powers, David claims that the calculator pulls real-time weather data from weather.gov, and combines it with school-specific data like road conditions and how frequently the school has closed in the past for bad weather conditions.

“I’m always nervous, every time I read the prediction and I look at the weather myself. I’m always nervous if it’s going to be right,” he told WBUR. But David’s now in 11th grade, and over the last five winters, his calculator hasn’t failed him once.

Want to see for yourself when a snow day is in store? Check out the snow day calculator here—and stock up on hot chocolate.

Filed under: Science, Weird,

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