Natrona County International Airport Shares Awesome Snow Blower Video
The Casper/Natrona County International Airport have stated that they have the best snow removal team and we would be hard pressed to argue with them.
The airport posted the short 30-second video to their official Facebook page along with the following message:
I know I'm going to sound like I'm biased, and I know I am, but we have the best snow removal crew (and I've worked at 5 airports and have been doing this for 30+ years). In Wyoming, you never know when the last snow operation will take place (like this upcoming Wednesday). Just a quick difference between clearing a runway and roadway. First off, our runways are 150' wide (the equivalent of over 12 lanes of highway), and snow must be pushed from one edge to the other with a series of plows/rotary brooms. Since you don't have to worry about parked cars, the plow blades are much wider, which means a heavier duty truck to push all that snow. Once you get all that snow to the other runway edge, the snow has to be blown over the lights since they are frangible mounted (in case an aircraft goes off the side or end of the runway, they simply break free) and you can't have any snow banks off the sides or end of a runway. This blower, that can clear 7,500 tons of snow per hour, demonstrates this capability.
If the upcoming winter storm is even half as bad as predicted, the snow removal team will be put to the test over the next few days.