Could someone explain to me why it is so little snow seems to be causing so much trouble?
A lot of the ground has been covered already, but there is another factor at work.
In the olden days, by which I mean before the wholesale privatisation of regional airports in the UK, many airport staffs took huge pride in keeping their airport open come what may. Pace the bloke supporting H&S precautions, and he's not entirely wrong, we just got on with the job, and I can tell you that there's few things more satisfying and enjoyable than being the 3rd in echelon with a blade going down 2Km of runway at 30pmh at 0200 after heavy snow, and enabling the first departure at 0630 .
And guess what, the crew, ops, engineering, airport staff and passengers all managed to get there in time as well, because they were not the brainwashed sheep that exist today who take a day off if they see a snowflake on the News and a policeman intones "Stay at home; it's dangerous out there" as though it really is.
We stayed open while some others closed. It wasn't just pride; we would collect tens of thousands of pounds for diversions that amply covered the cost of not closing.
Now, unfortunately, the bean counters have got spreadsheets that say that staying open is more expensive in terms of marginal cost than the marginal revenue that it earns. They're plumb wrong, because their range of vision is so limited and they cannot quantify the other costs of closure, but once a bean counter starts on about marginal costing, he's off with the fairies and you can only give up.
This applies to the smaller airports now, I think. The airport I'm talking about shut yesterday or the day before with 1 inch of snow, repeat
ONE INCH OF SNOW.
If I were an airline based there, or indeed one that has scheduled flights though it, I'd sue for incompetence, disruption and loss of business.
We kept it operational (for up to medium jets) after
1 foot of snow and temps down to -10C, 2 decades ago, using one ex Council urea spreader for surface ice prevention, 3 ex Council blade vehicles for snow clearance, and the will to provide the promised service to airlines come what may. The Financial Director was a whizz with the urea spreader; he was put on that because he would do it as economically as possible without missing a square metre. Management staff worked at night to rest up the proper operators for daytime. If we cleared and it snowed again, we cleared again. If we let it get too deep it became more difficult to shift.
Ah well, those were the days......back to the 21st century.