Wet and White Weather

School officials declared a snow day Tuesday in the Antelope Valley after a winter storm blanketed the High Desert and snowmen popped up in every second or third frontyard by midmorning.

“It was cool,” Michelei Robinson, 12, said as her younger brother put the finishing touches on their spaghetti-arms snowman. “This is only the second time it snowed this good.”

Although Antelope Valley residents occasionally see a light dusting during cold winters, it was the first time in four or five years that enough snow fell to close the schools, officials said.

About 60,000 students were affected by the closures.

The National Weather Service estimated that 4 to 6 inches of snow covered the ground Tuesday in the Antelope Valley.

It was more than enough for Michelei, who sledded down a hill behind her Palmdale home all morning with her siblings and young neighbors. After a take-no-prisoners snowball fight, some had already soaked their second change of clothes.

Michelei’s mother, Rachel Walker, said they woke to a beautiful view of the valley, but she was not looking forward to the snow day.

“I love the snow, but I would have liked for it to have fallen on a Saturday,” said Walker, a teacher at Desert Rose Elementary School in Palmdale. “We’re going to have to make this day up now, maybe on a Saturday.”

Palmdale district officials could not be reached Tuesday but Antelope Valley Union High School District spokeswoman Linda Solcich said her district would probably ask the state Department of Education for a waiver for the missed day. She said other school districts might do the same.

Heavy snow began falling about 11 p.m. Monday and continued for the next four hours, Palmdale resident Phil Solis said. By then, he had decided to declare a snow day for his entire family.

Solis and his two eldest sons usually leave for work in Hollywood at 2:45 a.m. Instead, the family of eight found the ideal sledding spot in the foothills south of Pearblossom Highway, about three miles from home. They dragged sleds and inner tubes up the hill, piled on two at a time and came barreling back down.

“This is a real snow day today,” Solis said.

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A few miles to the west, 16-year-old Todd Thomas made the most of the slopes’ recent grading for home sites for his sledding needs. He and friends Matt Perry, 15, and Mickie Frial, 18, built a ramp about a third of the way down one 40-foot hill.

Ordinarily, they said, they’d be “doing this on our bikes.”

While students did not attend classes at Hillview Middle School, some three dozen made it to the Palmdale school’s playing field for an “X-treme” snowball fight complete with fortified bunkers.

“We had four teams going at once,” said Jack Brittain, 15, a student at Highland High School in Palmdale.

“Another team knocked one out and then everybody started coming after us,” he said, stopping long enough to brush slush from his wet jeans before chucking another snowball.

Bill Hoffer, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said Antelope Valley residents may wake to snow again today.

“The atmosphere is totally saturated and unstable as all get-out up there,’ Hoffer said. “Additional snow accumulation of an inch or so in the foothills is possible.”