After waking up under a 7-inch blanket of snow, State College soon found itself in a leaky waterbed yesterday as climbing afternoon temperatures brought rain and slush.

And there's more white stuff to come, an area meteorologist anticipates, with snow again Thursday and a drop in this weekend's temperatures.

Yesterday's biggest storm of the season did not threaten the record 17.6 inches dumped on the borough on January 13, 1964. The snowfall was also 7.5 inches shy of the 1925 record for the day.

Flakes started to accumulate around 10 p.m. Sunday night before they changed to rain yesterday afternoon, said Accu-Weather meteorologist Ken Reeves.

While the area's public schools cancelled classes, many college students trudged faithfully to campus.

"This is the worst kind of weather," said Pete Cooper (sophomore-division of undergraduate studies). "Snow isn't a problem, rain isn't a problem, but cold rain and slush -- yuck!"

In the past few months snow has been virtually non-existent because the necessary amounts of moisture and cold air have not coincided, he said.

Maintenance teams were out early clearing campus streets and sidewalks, said Gerald Garbick, Office of Physical Plant snow marshal.

Starting at 7 a.m., about 50 workers used small trucks and shovels to remove snow from walkways. Two plows and a salt truck were used to clear streets and janitorial teams also shoveled building entrances, he said.

The only problem with the cleanup, Garbick said, was that snow continued to accumulate throughout the morning, so areas already cleared had to be worked on again later in the day. Trucks were to continue to remove ice and snow from University parking lots last night, he added.

Operations downtown also went smoothly, said Borough Engineer Wes Wagner. Clearing the snow off borough streets yesterday took longer than usual because of the rain, he said.

Dave Majeski (senior-animal production), a Campus Loop driver, said road conditions were bad until about 1:30 p.m., causing his bus to slide several times down Shortlidge Avenue.

Another Loop driver, Beth Yoder (junior-finance) said the snow may have caused more people to take public transportation, but the main effect of the weather is in the behavior of the riders.

"If it is snowing people take forever to get on and off the bus," Yoder said, adding that they often stand far from the curb to avoid getting splashed.