18 inches of snow means maintenance busy, events canceled
The weathermen were predicting a storm last week, and on Friday, Jan. 22, it started snowing just as expected. However, the amount of snow that was coming was not truly known–that is, until it came down of course.
With the snow expected to hit sometime Friday afternoon, Gov. Tom Wolf declared Pennsylvania in a state of emergency Thursday night, hoping to prepare everyone for the severe weather that was about to come.
Pennsylvania was one of 11 states entered a state of emergency for the weekend.
Waynesburg University, covered in over a foot and a half of snow, felt the effects of Winter Storm Jonas. According to the Department of Public Safety, the amount of snowfall measured was approximately 18.5 inches.
Some students who were stranded on campus went out to play in the snow in any way they could: snowball fights, sled-riding and snowmen were popping up all around campus.
But not everyone outside was playing in the snow.
Sattler, director of facilities planning and management, was out around the campus with his workers, keeping it safe for students. His weekend consisted of clearing roads, sidewalks and stairs.
Sattler said that it felt as though the second they had the campus cleared of snow and safe, they had to start over again because the snow simply kept coming without hesitation.
“We got about 18 inches of snow in about a 12 hour period, so we were pretty constantly working out on campus. We actually never stopped – whether we were plowing or blowing or shoveling – we were just working continuously through the weekend,” said Sattler.
But he wasn’t complaining. It’s his job to help keep the campus safe when snowstorms like Jonas hit the campus.
Sattler prepared for the storm by making sure the equipment was ready for when the snow hit campus. Sattler said that there were a couple of snow-blowers that hadn’t been used in years, but once he heard about the snowfall early last week, he was able to get them out and running.
Sattler said this was key because there was so much snow that it was tough to plow: the smaller snow blowers are able to clear some areas in a more effective way because they are able to quickly relocate the snow from sidewalks and roads. Sattler said that the students’ snowed-in cars made it tough to clear the parking lots to make room for more parking spots. Because of the extreme amounts of snow, Sattler called in an outside local contractor, Thrall’s Contracting Co., to help. They brought loaders and dump trucks to help move snow from the parking spots to the back of Thayer Hall’s parking lot.
Thrall’s was helping on both Sunday and Monday evening in order to make more parking available for students, professors and faculty members.
Sattler said that from Friday morning until Monday morning, there were several workers on campus during every hour of the day, ready to take care of the snow.
Several events on campus were either canceled or rescheduled on account of the weather. On Thursday afternoon during a conference call between Waynesburg University and Thomas More College, it was “in best interest for both teams” that the game scheduled to be played on Saturday at Waynesburg would be moved to Friday afternoon, according to Director of Athletics Larry Marshall.
Since the Presidents’ Athletic Conference [PAC] has a packed schedule with games during every week and weekend until the last week of the season – which is followed immediately by playoffs – the game needed to be played during the weekend. Thomas More had a several-hour bus ride and had the game been rescheduled for a weeknight, the players would have had to miss classes. Therefore, moving the game up to Friday seemed to be the best plan of action.
After leaving early Friday morning, the Thomas More bus arrived on campus with some time to spare before the tip-off of the men’s game at 3:00 p.m. The games were played at the same time as usually set on Saturday, just a day earlier, in hopes that Thomas More would be able to play the game and head out before the snow was at its worst.
Leaving shortly after the conclusion of the women’s game around 8 p.m., the team’s bus made it back safely to their campus in Kentucky at approximately 2 a.m. Marshall heard from the team about their arrival and was glad the game was able to be played and that the Saints made it back to campus.
Along with the basketball game being affected by the weather, West Virginia University canceled the indoor track and field invitational that was scheduled to be held on Saturday. The men’s and women’s teams had an off weekend due to the weather.
Other events, such as the ice-skating trip for Friday and the Bonner event for Saturday, were postponed. The Bonner event has not been rescheduled officially yet, but the ice-skating is now scheduled for Friday, Feb. 12.
Knowing the weather was coming, the Student Activities Board hosted a game night in the Beehive on Friday and a snow-sculpting contest on Saturday. On Saturday night, the Grease movie night and costume contest was held in the Beehive and many of the “stranded” residents living on campus attended the event – and enjoyed doing so.
Although the university was hit with an unbelievable amount of snow, Waynesburg was not nearly as bad as other areas. According to the Huffington Post, Glengary, West Virginia was hit with a whopping 42 inches of snow fall accumulating from Friday through Sunday. The report also stated that over 80 million Americans on the East Coast were affected by the snowstorm.
The article also reported that there has been at least 31 reported deaths due to Winter Storm Jonas.
From Friday to Sunday the weather was affecting everything from the road ways to airports to U.S. federal government offices to local businesses and schools – most of which shut down well in advance of Monday and Tuesday.