After a record-breaking snowfall Sunday evening and minor accumulation Monday morning, MSU suspended classes and operations until noon, giving students time to clear their drive and walkways, or catch a few more hours of sleep.
The notice came late Sunday night, sometime around 11:30 p.m. Though earlier that day, MSU spokesman Jason Cody said he did not expect a snow day or a delay in operations.
Even before the official suspension notice, many professors had canceled their classes.
The confusion resulted from there not being a conference call among administrators, operations chiefs and other high-level university officials scheduled at that earlier time, Cody said. In these conference calls university officials deliberate on canceling classes, delaying them or operating as usual.
Delaying classes and operations until noon gave MSU Infrastructure Planning and Facilities the necessary time to clear campus walkways, parking lots and roads, Cody said.
“Our guys at IPF were working overnight — I mean, they had all the drivers in,” he said. “They really got out there, and they did a great job.”
Finance senior James Berta, who was out shoveling his walkways Monday afternoon, said the delay was “better than nothing” but should have been declared earlier.
Not having class until noon gives him more time to clear the sidewalks and avoid a fine.
“It’s been tough (clearing the sidewalks of snow), but having school off is nice, having a little more time to work on it,” he said.
Berta said he intends to make use of the snowfall by playing tackle football in it with friends.
Packaging senior Stephanie Williams said she was more surprised than disappointed MSU only delayed classes until noon.
The upside of the snowfall is that she’ll share the joy of building a snowman with her roommate who has yet to experience it.
“Our roommate is from Hawaii, so she’s never built a snowman, and we keep promising next time it does (snow) we’ll build one,” Williams said.
Though the snowfall for Monday, as of press time, has been underwhelming — an estimated 1.7 inches — the 8 inches of accumulation in the Lansing area Sunday broke all historic records, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.
“I would say it’s the strongest, most significant storm of the winter season so far — if we’re talking wide-spread snow for the whole area,” NOAA meteorologist Evan Webb said. “There have been significant lake shore snows, but this was a synoptic storm, a storm that tracked from the plains, across the Ohio valley, that affected all of southern lower Michigan.”
