On Oct.10, the official start to midterms, the daily high was 61 degrees, six degrees below normal. The highest temperature during the week was only 63 degrees. Along with these cold temperatures, St. John’s was under water for eight days of torrential rains.
Residents of Donovan Hall came to the rescue of their fellow students during the storms.
“We started a gondola service to get across Lake Donovan to retrieve mail from the mail room,” freshman Ben Liss said.
The rain was difficult for many students to cope with as the fall semester had proven to be a hard one to jumpstart because of the weather, which had been warm and pleasant in New York during the first several weeks.
“The extended summer weather made me less excited about the start of school,” junior Amanda Lenar said. “Growing up, the start of school brought fall weather but not this year.”
Senior Manny Digenakis agreed that the weather made the start of the school year much more difficult.
“I wanted to be on the beach,” Digenakis said.. “I didn’t feel school had started till midterms.”
The rain storms, however, were just as difficult for students to cope with while trying to maintain their regular schedules.
Sandra Garcia, a sophomore from Long Island, said she felt like she was “marooned on an island and asking for help,” as Public Safety vehicles drove by her.
Between Wednesday and Thursday alone, St. John’s students in Jamaica, Queens faced around five inches of rain.
“I wanted to bring my computer to class but I knew I would have to swim to get there and didn’t want it to get destroyed,” sophomore Lauren Reiss said.
Students at St. John’s were not the only people affected by this random weather. In New York, the Belt Parkway along with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Long Island Expressway all experienced flooding.
Long Island suffered sporadic flooding, according to an Oct. 16 article in Newsday. Flooding was so bad, Newsday reported, that the basement of late artist Jackson Pollock’s East Hampton home was filled with approximately 18 inches of water on Oct. 15.
The National Weather Service said another cold front will be moving in on Long Island. Students will need to break out their umbrellas once again in preparation of the next bout of bad weather.
