After days of unseasonably muggy weather, sunny skies and then torrential downpour, students worked up a fresh blanket of confusion as snow fell Tuesday morning.

“I need three different kinds of shampoo to handle this weather,” said College senior Matthew Brooke.

“This kind of weather makes me and everyone I know crazy,” said Meghan Bernhardt, also a College senior. “I mean, I want to wear my snow boots, but then I only get a two-hour window [because then it stops snowing].”

Over the past week, Oberlin certainly has had quite a glimpse through the catalog of weather conditions. When the Review went to press last Friday, the air was humid and the sky was gray. After some sun and cooler days over the weekend, the winds picked up on Monday, bringing in thunderstorms and twenty minutes of flushing rains, when only a few hours before, a midday oasis of sunshine had students playful on Wilder Bowl.

After the average temperature dropped twenty degrees between Monday and Tuesday, the storm turned to snowfall. The snow quickly vanished, though, and overcast skies returned for the rest of the week.

But there is nothing odd about this weather, according to Rudd Crawford, who has kept a diary of weather in Oberlin for the last 14 years.

“You can’t really be surprised by anything in March,” said Crawford, who is a retired high school math teacher as well as a former associate professor of mathematics at the College. “The crocuses are coming out, trees are in bud and cardinals are making out territory...[but kids] are also expecting days off from school [due to snow]...March is the [most bizarre] month.”

Crawford added that this particular March reminded him of the March of 1996.

Mark McKinley, a meteorologist in Oberlin for the National Weather Service, said Oberlinians get some of the most “flip-flop” weather this time of year because the difference between the temperatures of warm fronts and cold fronts is more substantial than it is in other months. Such contrasts between oncoming weather systems also bring strong winds, said McKinley.

Last week’s storm and successive chill were caused by a cold front from Canada and a warm front over Lake Erie, meeting in air that was unstable from strong winds that had been coming in from the So uth all week. These southern winds were also responsible for the humidity late last week, as they brought in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.

Fortunately, the brief but powerful storm did not harm any of the College landscape.

“There are 3,000 trees on campus and virtually no damage,” said Dennis Grieve, grounds manager of the College. “We make it a policy to maintain trees by getting rid of weak branches.”

McKinley said that Oberlin should expect another storm system this week, and possibly snow.