Born and raised in a strip of rural southern Ontario known as the "snow belt," I'm no stranger to snow days. In the winter months, I used to turn on the radio before turning on the lights in the morning, waiting for the announcer to say that magical phrase - "buses are cancelled, and the school is closed" - which cleared my schedule for a day on the backyard toboggan hills.
Snow days in Vancouver, however, don't exactly jive with my childhood memories. Last week's late-season storm was a mere flurry compared to the "snowmaggedons" back home, causing only slight inconvenience for most of us getting to work. The real challenge of a Vancouver snow day lies with those tasked with getting all that white stuff out of the way before it melts and turns to ice. At TRIUMF, this falls to the Plant Group.
Building Services Leader Curtis Ballard's snow day begins the night before the flakes start falling. He must gauge whether or not the forecasted storm will be bad enough to call in the snowplow company to clear the parking lot. We're all familiar with weather forecaster's propensity for enthusiastically inflated predictions, and as Ballard notes, "most snow days are false alarms." In fact, last week was the first time in three years that the extra help of a snowplow has been required.
When snowstorms hit, all other tasks are put on the back burner for Curtis and his team, as clearing the snow becomes the first priority. The first team members on site get started with the salting, since ice generally poses a greater safety threat than snow. Then they power up the front-end loader and blades to clear the driveways, fire lane, and high-traffic areas behind the fence where the bulk of experimental activity occurs.
"On an average day behind the fence, we have trucks coming in, we have a lot of people walking, and we need to get forklifts back and forth," explains Ballard. As a result, it's a top priority to keep those areas clear of snow.
On especially snowy days like Monday last week, two shovel-wielding workers were busy all day keeping walkways and doorways clear. Despite efforts, the snow continued to fall (15 cm in total) and finally tapered off in the evening, allowing the TRIUMF crew to catch up while the snow plow company arrived to clear the parking lot before it froze into treacherous ice.
Moving the snow is one challenge facing the group, but finding a place to put it is another matter altogether. One particularly bad storm in the 1990s left a 20-foot snow pile in the middle of the parking lot for weeks. In past years, the Plant Group has also been called to unearth cars in the parking lot that became encased in snow over the course of the day. Snow build up on roofs is another concern, especially on the Meson Hall, TRIUMF's oldest building. Every significant snowfall opens up new cracks in need of patching.
With the remainder of last week's snow washed down the storm drains, we're looking ahead to spring showers and tulip bulbs. That brief interlude of Ontario-cold temperatures is all but forgotten, thanks to the work of the Curtis and the Plant Group who ensure that at TRIUMF, science stops for no snowfall.
-Lindsay Kroes, Communications Assistant