Blizzard Jonas struck Maryland on Jan. 22, 2016, leaving over two feet of snow across the state. Facilities was ready with an action plan to get rid of the snow.

Jon Wells, director of facilities at Stevenson University, reported that the school measured 32 inches of snow on the Owings Mills campus. This abundant snow accumulation led to the delay of classes and events for several days.

After reports of the approaching storm, Wells said that the facilities personnel monitored the upcoming forecast and developed a storm team to handle the large amount of snow that was predicted to hit. He also was in contact with all the campus departments that would be affected by the storm. This was done in order to address operational issues.

According to Wells, the storm team included 13 employees as well as outside contractors for the roads and parking lots. Stevenson University uses Alpha Landscape Contractors, Inc. to make sure that all campuses are cleared during snowstorms.

After the worst of the snow hit, Wells said that the team “took about 72 hours to completely clear the campuses” and prepare the university for operations to begin again.

With the large amount of snow being removed from the Owings Mills and Greenspring campuses, snow had to be transported to the Owings Mills North campus.

Wells said, “We moved 4,000 cubic yards of snow to the Owings Mills North campus and 6,000 cubic yards of snow was dumped over the walls at Owings Mills.” Once the snow was removed,  facilities used three tons of salt on the roads and parking lots of the campuses, not including the amount used on the sidewalks.

Even though many students had already returned to campus before the storm, Wells and his team wanted to thank all the students who moved their cars to allow facilities to do their job and make the removal of snow a lot quicker. Due to the precautionary measures that were taken and the hard work that was done by facilities, all campuses were able to be cleared quickly and efficiently for returning students.