In a town that receives an average of 80 inches of snow a year, Middlebury’s snow removal team shoulders a heavy responsibility. Yet with a recent uptick in extreme weather conditions and a statewide salt shortage, Facilities staff are navigating an increasingly unpredictable winter landscape.
Of the 55 Facilities staff assigned to snow removal, 35–40 work as shovelers, while the remainder operate snow blowers, plows and tractors. All of their work occurs hours before the campus wakes up, with plowing starting at anywhere from 2:30 to 4:00 a.m. and shoveling beginning at 6:00 am. Ideally, all snow removal work ceases before students and faculty begin traversing the campus.
“Shoveling sounds worse than it is. It's cold, you're outside working, you start in the dark and it generally takes about three hours,” Tim Parsons, landscape horticulturist and visiting Architecture Studies lecturer, wrote in a message to The Campus. “But you're surrounded by help, friends and co-workers all working together, and you get it done.”
Facilities boasts an armada of shovels, snow blowers, tractors and plows. The college’s salt supply is a nearly 15-foot pile in a small garage outside of Facilities Services.
Luther Tenny, director of facilities services, has served alongside Landscape Services Supervisor Clinton Snyder as the college’s de facto meteorologist for more than a decade. The two of them track weather systems across a wide range of online forecasting platforms to formulate the timeline of snow removal.
“I can’t tell you the number of linked weather sites I have that I know how to interpret the forecast for this area,” Tenny said in an interview with The Campus. “We try to make a decision the night before on how early our plows or shovelers may come in.”
A storm typically begins in the afternoon and continues through the night, tapering off in the morning. Snow removal begins once the storm has largely ceased.
Snow removal teams prioritize high-traffic areas on campus and move from the center of campus outward when plowing after a storm. Dining halls, where staff arrive early to start food preparation, are at the top of the list. Groups of five to six shovelers are then assigned to a cluster of buildings, tractors are used to clear sidewalks and plows are used to clear college-owned streets.
Storrs Avenue, Chateau Road, Freeman Way and streets that run through campus are managed by the college, while the remainder are cleared by the town of Middlebury. Some college properties down South Main Street, which are difficult for the college's snow removal team to reach, are contracted to external snow removal services.
“I had no idea when I started what snow removal on a campus entails. Every walk, every door, every fire exit and balcony. Walk around and count how many doors this school has, I dare you,” Parsons wrote.
“Fortunately, it has been a relatively typical winter, with temperatures cold enough to keep the snow dry and easier to manage,” Tenny said. In the 20 years Parsons has worked on snow removal at Middlebury, there have only been a few official snow days. During a Valentine's Day storm in 2007, when Middlebury received two and a half feet of snow, Parsons was unable to drive home and slept on the floor of the services building.
In the past few years, according to Tenny, precipitation events would come through with warmer moisture. Sleet and melting snow are much more difficult to remove and require more thorough salting of walkways.
Interruptions in salt supply are common in winter, but occurred earlier and for a longer period of time this year. Salt is transported via train from port cities like Boston, New York, Baltimore and some in the Great Lakes area. Facilities noticed a delivery disruption in early January and have since rationed their stockpile.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation has priority for salt delivery to manage higher-speed roads, while towns have the second-highest priority. Institutions like Middlebury come third. Due to the drier snow conditions and extreme cold this winter, Tenny believes the college has enough salt to manage the slippery conditions expected in the spring.
“Salt is especially needed in March, when you get the thawing during the day and then re-freezing at night,” Tenny said.
As climate change intensifies, Middlebury can expect more extreme weather, but Tenny believes that the area will still receive snow every winter. The facilities team is focused on preparing for potentially higher-wind, higher-intensity storms in the years to come.
“It’s more about preparing for the extreme events,” Tenny said. “If you can handle the extreme events, then the others are just easy to take care of.”
