First Snow of the Season

Bud Winsor (Physical Plant) reports that the 8-10 inches of heavy, wet snow that fell in Keene on December 9 made it difficult for the KSC Building and Grounds crew to keep the campus parking lots and sidewalks clear. On Tuesday the crew began spreading Ice-Ban, the thin brown syrup applied prior to a storm to prevent snow and ice from freezing to the pavement. And on Wednesday they worked from 6 a.m.-6 p.m. It takes about three days to clean up after a storm of this size (scraping pavement and trucking away snow). Bud says that the forecasting tools available now have helped with storm-related tasks: “real time” forecasts indicated that the temperatures would rise after snowfall, so the crew focused on scraping snow rather than spreading salt (which also saved the College money).