Stadiums and Snow – The Challenges of a New England Winter

At the junction of winter’s snow and the increasing intensity of the football season during the crucial run to the playoffs, have you ever attended or watched a football game and wondered how the stadium gleams so clear and pristine amid the surrounding piles and crusts of brown-tinged, half-melted snow and ice?

Winter snow can be a well-documented, full-blown headache for Northern and Central states which must deal with road, lot, and roof clearing.  Sports arenas have similar challenges, and Connecticut is no exception.

At Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Assistant General Manager Derek Miles is prepared for any snow situation. The staff at Pratt & Whitney Stadium consult a weather app - mostly to keep track of lightning strikes during events, but also helpful for snow predictions - and check the local forecasts to see if all incoming information is in line, to determine how many crew and how much equipment is needed to tackle the upcoming precipitation.

Generally, for about 3 inches of snow, the four person in-house crew will work for about 3-4 hours to clear the roads and lots. Their equipment will include a truck with a plow, tractor with a plow, tractor with a snow blower, and a quad with a plow.

However, crews have needed to clear the 40,000-capacity stadium, which consists of upper and lower level bowls, twice in its 15 seasons with in-house crews augmented by contracted crew and equipment. For use on the natural Kentucky Blue Grass field, which can take five people up to a day to clear, “we have a tractor with a PVC-like pipe on the plow’s blade for protection,’' Miles said.

The tractor pushes the snow to the sides of the field, and then snow is loaded by crew members onto Bobcats and tractors with wagons to bring through the main tunnel out into the parking lots. Field clearing is priority, as crews need the time for maintenance and painting; which can happen while other portions of the stadium are being cleared.

In order to clear the stands of snow, up to 60 people shovel snow “into long tubes and it acts a bit like Chutes and Ladders,” explained Miles. The tubes are placed in the aisles in the upper bowl and the snow “runs down to a staircase where we have another tube that takes it down to the concourse. From the concourse, we take the snow out via a Bobcat loading into the wagon in the back of the tractor,” he continued. In the lower bowl, the tubes are employed in the aisles and “the snow goes down to field level where the chutes directly put the snow into the wagon of the tractor.”

To address icy patches that the sun won’t be able to melt and dry requires salt in the stands and sand in the field, as well as the surrounding apron, although that’s really a last resort, according to Miles.

The stadium is owned by the state’s Office of Policy and Management (OPM), according to the official website, which serves as a staff agency reporting directly to the Governor, providing the information and analysis required to formulate public policy. The Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), a quasi-state agency, oversees the day to day stadium operations per an agreement with the OPM. The primary tenant of Pratt & Whitney Stadium is the University of Connecticut’s football team.

Perhaps the most extreme example of snow removal in recent years - which still stands out in Miles’ mind - was needing to clear two storms’ worth of snow in anticipation of the week of outdoor sporting events that culminated in the Whale Bowl in February 2011.

Where to put the 18 inches of snow that had accumulated on both the field and in the stands required some improvisation. Generally certain portions of the 100 acres of parking lots are designated for the snow piles, but for the snow left behind by these storms, it was clear that wouldn’t be sufficient.

On-site and contracted tractors, Bobcats, Skid-Steers, and front loaders all pushed snow from the stadium and the parking lots into multiple piles up to 30 feet high, in designated areas in each lot. Management made the decision to clear about 30 – 40 acres of lots and close the media lot. The media lot was then filled with snow, and members of the media were directed to park in other lots and improvised parking spaces.

Especially for the large storms, clearing the stadium can take crews up to two full days, and at times the crews have worked overnight for 24 hours consecutively to enable sporting events to forward as scheduled. The bottom line: if snow is in the forecast and you have tickets to an upcoming event at the Rent, there should be no need to worry about clearing your seat of snow before the game begins.

This story was reported and written by Julia Penland for CT by the Numbers.

BOTTOM PHOTO:  Rentschler Field cleared of snow prior to the 2011 Whale Bowl. (Courtesy of Derek Miles)