The lighter side of The News: What would Jesus do about snow days?; Name that city; Blown away by an alleycat

Amid wintry weather, it is not unusual for school leaders to field messages from students begging for a snow day.

Friar Matthew Foley, president at St. Francis High School, received four of them Monday evening as a snowstorm projected for the Southern Tier lumbered its way farther north than expected.

One email plea was more memorable than the others, and Foley shared it on X Monday night before making any decision about closing.

The student, whose name was redacted, began with classic arguments, noting poor weather and unsafe driving conditions. Then the message took a sudden turn.

“Remember the time after school when you came to the activity center and I was eating chicken nuggets from Wendy’s and I gave you one out of the kindness of my heart as Jesus would. Now I’m not saying you have to give us the snow day”

Athol Springs received a little more than a foot of snow Monday into Tuesday, and Foley made the decision to close school, along with many others in the Southtowns. Naturally, he reposted the student’s email with his own message.

“School closed. I was more worried about (the) road than chicken nuggets. But that will be a good lunch today.”

We Buffalonians know what it’s like to have someone from a larger media market pick on us because of our snow, Rust Belt economy or Super Bowl losses.

So we could sympathize when, this week, the target of an out-of-town tweak was that city an hour to the east of us … er, what’s it called again?

It started when Cory McCloskey, a weather anchor for FOX 10 News in Phoenix, showed his viewers the snow hitting parts of upstate New York on Monday evening.

“It’s kind of a mess across the usual snow spots here from Buffalo up toward, uh, toward, uh, Kodak,” McCloskey said, searching for the name of the city, as seen in a video clip shared on X, formerly Twitter, by James Gilbert, a meteorologist with News 8 in Rochester.

“You know, where all the camera…