After chilly month, snow days, students enjoy Sunday heat
After snowfall, canceled classes and weeks of chilly weather, Sunday finally came to remind USC students that they’re still in the South.
Warm winter weather wavering around 74 degrees brought a mass of students out onto the Horseshoe to soak up the sun. Some jogged and played lacrosse; most simply laid out on towels and enjoyed reading or sleeping.
“It’s been really nice today. We came out to the Horseshoe and did some studying,” said Evan Ishida, a first-year business student.
He and his two friends, also first-year business students, had been outside for about two hours.
“It’s a huge mood booster, of course, for it to be so nice and warm that you can come out in your T-shirt and shorts,” Ishida said.
The warm turn of events surprised some students, but not Hunter Coleman, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Columbia.
“We’re almost into February now, and we usually get some warm days during January and February each year,” Coleman said. “We just had an abnormally cold December this year.”
But Coleman did point out that on Sunday specifically the temperature was higher than average.
“We are well above normal today. We’re in the 70s now, and our normal high is around 56,” Coleman said.
He added that it won’t be until the last week of March that the national temperature is 70 degrees or greater.
The students who took advantage of the warm, sunny weather were wise to do so; a forecast from the National Weather Service predicts that temperatures will dip to the 50s and 40s for the rest of the week, except for Wednesday. There will also be a possibility of rain every day, including a 70 percent chance on Wednesday and a 60 percent chance on Friday.
But as the warm Sunday lingered on into a cool evening, the rain and work of the coming days were far from their minds. Danielle Kelly, a fourth-year music education student, stayed on the Horseshoe past 5 p.m. as many students packed up their towels and headed inside.
“It’s such a relief to have a nice day, a break from the cold weather, that we decided to come out and just enjoy it,” Kelly said.