Looking at Campus Through the Lens of Snow Removal

Continued from page 7 more time to safely commute to the school, and would have the flexibility to take more time to clear snow. “We wouldn’t feel as pressured and anxious to actually have to do all of it. We’d get it done, but it wouldn’t be as much pressure,” they said.

Custodians use shovels to remove snow around buildings, while supervisors use RTVs, all terrain type vehicles with plows and salters, to help out in these same areas. The grounds department uses two large construction loaders for the main roads and parking lots, Bobcat toolcats for the main sidewalks, and their own RTVs for buildings, patios, crosswalks and dumpster areas.

Additionally, grounds staff use shovels and snowblowers for areas that larger equipment can’t access. Both teams also use salt, which makes snowy areas less slippery by creating “a barrier between the snow and the roads so that there’s a minute layer of melted snow [so] that the snow can’t stick to the asphalt,” Lauzier said. “Think of Pam in your pan when you’re cooking.”

After a storm is finally over, the departments take a day to decompress — Lauzier calls that the “24hour rule.” After those 24 hours, the custodial and grounds teams reconvene to discuss how the process went. “What was successful? What wasn’t successful? What do we need to do better next time?” Lauzier said they ask. “We don’t want to be the kinds of teams that draw, literally, lines in the salt and say, ‘I do this to over there, and you do that to over there … ’ We have those conversations frequently to make sure that we’re not opposing each other, and we’re helping each other. Because we are here for the same task.”

A Deeper Understanding

Employees also reflected on the stories and place-specific knowledge that comes with the job of snow removal.

Lauzier has observed small microclimates within the Amherst campus itself. For a reason that nobody is quite sure of, snow seems to behave differently on the main quad than it does at the Science Center.

“I’ll see snow stick to the main quad sidewalks before it sticks to the Science Center sidewalks,” Lauzier said. “Even within campus, [there are] pockets.”

He noted the importance of using a range of weather sources. For trustworthy information about the Pioneer Valley’s local weather patterns, Lauzier says he follows Dave Hayes the Weather Nut, a local man who is not formally trained in meteorology but has extensively educated himself about weather. He posts forecasts on Facebook and, as Lauzier put it, is “more accurate with weather forecasts than any legitimate meteorologist.”

Hayes refers to Amherst as part of “the snow lover’s triangle of disappointment” because of its low snowfalls in comparison to surrounding areas. The March 4 snowstorm, for example, dropped 3 inches in Amherst but 8 in Northampton. Lauzier recounted an even more extreme instance in March a few years back, when weather forecasts predicted three consecutive storms that would drop around 18 to 24 inches of snow in the region. While Pelham, which is about 8 miles away from Amherst, got almost 30 inches of snow in the storms, Amherst got less than 3.

Pereira mentioned the new ways you come to see campus after having experienced plowing snow on its pathways. For example, the patio behind Johnson Chapel, and the one between James, Stearns and the Mead are known to be difficult for plowing because they are hard to navigate and are unevenly paved with stones. Before recent maintenance and repairs on the main roads on campus, too, Pereira and Lauzier recounted the common experience of hitting a small, obscured bump in the road while plowing. For example, if there is a small manhole in the road, “you’re just plowing, and plowing and plowing, and … a plow doesn’t just glide over that. You crash into that,” said Lauzier. “And somebody watching you just sees you hit nothing in the road, but your whole plow goes five feet in the air.”

Pereira said that inside jokes and community form around common experiences like these. “After we go around and we plow, then we go back to the office, and we sit down and we start talking,” she said. “‘Oh my god, you’ll never believe what happened to me, I was plowing and all of the sudden, the plow hit this stone … ’ ‘Did you go there?’ ‘Were you able to plow?’ Things like that, telling stories about what happened.”

Benware said he looks at snow, and the responsibilities that come with it, as one part of a job that changes with the seasons. “In the fall, you’ll end up getting all sorts of leaves and pine needles tracked into your building, or blown in through the wind. In the spring, you end up with muddy footprints all through your building, from people out at the sporting fields … In the summer, it’s the pollen,” he said. “Every season has its own thing.”