The snow kept falling and falling and falling.

And by the time it stopped on February 11, a city record 11.4 inches lay on the ground and streets and houses and trees. The total buried the previous record of 7.8 inches in 1917 and 1964.

Not surprisingly, the university canceled classes on Thursday and Friday and students took to the outside for frolicking and wide-eyed amazement.

Scores of snowmen decorated in TCU apparel emerged across campus. A massive snowball fight lasted for hours in the Campus Commons. Someone stuck a perfectly rounded snowball in the hand of Addison at the Clark Brothers statue. Igloos and snow angels decorated the frigid landscape.

But leave it to the university’s academic taskmaster to urge undergrads to seize the extra study time.

Provost Nowell Donovan composed this playful e-mail to the campus community: “I would like to take this opportunity to correct a common spelling error by some students. The correct spelling of ‘snow day’ is actually ‘BOOKDAY’ — traditionally a time to extend the mind by comprehending the Fibonacci sequence and thus uncovering the mysteries of the Golden Ratio, by calculating phi to the millionth decimal point and by learning the details of the periodic table of the elements. If, in addition you can translate some Sanskrit texts, you will have earned the right to build the largest snow frog in the history of the university.”

On the Web:
Gallery of photos from Feb. 11-12, 2010