We were watching the Lions-Patriots game today. (Ouch, by the way). A distant relative of mine asked how they were going to remove all that snow from the stands at Bills Stadium in Buffalo. They have probably had to deal with worse in Decembers past, if not Novembers. But we don’t know how they dealt with it. (Luckily for the Bills, they don’t play at home again until Dec. 3, so they have a while to take care of it.)
It seems to me it would be pretty straightforward to remove the snow from the field with front-end loaders and dump trucks. But what about the stands? Do they send people up with shovels or what? And where do they shovel the snow to?
The same question applies to other open-air football stadiums in the snow belt (NFL, CFL, and college). Green Bay’s Lambeau Field springs immediately to mind, for example.
Well I couldn’t find an answer to your question, but I found the Lambeau field web-cam and a long and touching story about replacing the destroyed turf at Lambeau field, just before a game.
Maybe if you watch the Lambeau cam after a big blizzard you can figure it out.
I think that in the case of Rich Stadium, the operators of the stadium hire a big crew, give them shovels and they push all the snow into the aisles. Then they push it out over the edge, where it either ends up on the field or in the section below.
> I think that in the case of Rich Stadium, the operators
> of the stadium hire a big crew, give them shovels and
> they push all the snow into the aisles. Then they push it
> out over the edge, where it either ends up on the field
> or in the section below.
A REAL Buffalonian. Probably still doing your grocery shopping at Bells, and your Christmas shopping at Hengerer’s and AM&As, huh?
(True to its “trapped in the past” reputation, Buffalonians tend to have a habit of calling places and businesses by the name that they were known as 20 or 30 years ago. Lots of folks back home insist I did my undergraduate work at “State Teacher’s,” even though it’s been Buffalo State College since the 1960s.)
BTW, the description of snow removal at what is now called Ralph Wilson Stadium is correct. The snow on the field is carefully removed, trucked outside through some of the larger passageways, and dumped in the parking lot.
Two feet? A mere dusting, some minor flurries, that’s all. It’s only a storm when the Catholic schools close, IMHO. The 'rents live in Amherst, at the epicenter of the recent storm – they got about 30 inches in the front yard. The street they live on was plowed down to the pavement a few hours after the storm stopped. Meanwhile, here in Denver, anything more than a few inches shuts the city down. Two feet?
At Lambeau Field in Green Bay, local volunteers come in before game day and shovel the snow down to the field to be trucked out just for the privelege of entering the sacred walls.
