Clearing ’23 football fields’

“Even after about a decade of working out here, you feel like a kid out on the airfield,” the airport’s Director of Engineering & Maintenance Mark Day says.

A historic 17.1 inches of snow blanketed the airport’s runway Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

The runway is 7,000 feet long, the size of 23 football fields!

“We had a little mixture of everything,” Maintenance Manager Leslie Sandusky says. “Sleet, freezing rain and lots of heavy wet snow.”

“A snow storm this bad? Not in my time here,” Day says. “This is a good heavy wet snow.”

Mother Nature couldn’t stop the dedicated team of about two dozen from clearing the runway.

Even though most commercial flights were canceled, the airport was open for business.

“Rumor has it that one local university coach was on one of the aircraft in the middle of the night that came in,” Day says.

After all that snow, some tired trucks are now resting. Their caked snow slowly melting away in a warm garage.

And some tired employees get some much needed rest, waiting for the ‘next one’.