The University of Rhode Island was blanketed by a winter storm that severely affected the Kingston campus over this past weekend.
Winter Storm Kenan hit Rhode Island the night of Jan. 28 around 11:30 p.m., causing URI to prepare for an estimated 12 to 20 inches of snow, torrential winds, and coastal flooding.
Flurries began around 12 p.m. on Friday. However, the blizzard warning from the National Weather Service came earlier at 9:40 a.m., and warned of 2-4 inches of snow per hour and gusts of wind at up to 60 miles per hour.
Kenan has been referred to as a “bomb cyclone,” which, according to the Providence Journal, is a strong, pressurized storm that drops at least 24 millibars, a unit used for calculating atmospheric pressure, in the span of a day. New England faced the worst of it.
On Jan. 28, URI announced that there would be a partial parking ban on the Kingston campus during the weekend of the storm to clear up space for necessary plowing and salting until 6 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 30.
Vehicles were not allowed to park on Upper College Road, Lower College Road, West Alumni Road or Flagg Road during that period. Students, faculty and staff were allowed to park in any parking lot designated for them, but after the storm had to relocate to the Plains Road and Fine Arts building parking lots so further plowing could be done.
“The reason we’ve extended [the parking ban] to Sunday is that we need to keep an eye on accumulation,” Michael Jagoda, chief of URI campus police and public safety, said. “We need to give our grounds and facility workers time to rest in between [clearing snow] so that they can go back out there and do that final clean up for Sunday.”
The COVID-19 testing center at the Memorial Union closed for the storm, as well as Health Services and the Counseling Center, but those services could still be reached over the phone.
Student auditions and a college concert scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 29 in the Fine Arts Center were canceled. A performance from the Warwick Symphony Orchestra and an opera workshop, set to be held on Sunday, were rescheduled to Feb. 4.
Additionally, the upper levels of Robert L. Carothers Library & Learning Commons were closed on Saturday, but the 24-hour room remained open throughout the weekend. Mainfare Dining Hall had limited hours throughout the storm, closing at 6 p.m.
All fitness related buildings were closed to the public and experienced delayed openings on Sunday.
Stakeholders from each department on campus, academic and otherwise, had meetings with the Office of Emergency Managements to discuss storm protocols on both Jan. 27 and 28.
Administration urged students to stay in and stay warm during the weekend because of the hazardous conditions, and to make room for the snow removal equipment to make its necessary rounds.
“The University’s Department of Public Safety cannot state strongly enough that the majority of the University’s faculty, staff and students should remain at home and off campus area roads throughout the upcoming powerful and dangerous storm,” an email sent to URI staff and students on Friday. “All essential employees are required to report tomorrow.”
For the safety of students, the University started preparing for the Nor’easter as early as possible. Having students on campus at the time of the storm posed a concern for property damage caused by activities such as snowball fights, or more seriously, the possibility of a vehicular collision with any of the snow plows.
Due to these concerns, campus police were to be “visible and proactive,” while plow crews made their rounds, said Jagoda.
Assistant Communications Director Dave Lavallee compared working this weekend to his experiences as a URI student during the blizzard of ‘78.
“We were closed for a week,” Lavallee said. “But that storm did something that this storm doesn’t appear to do. That storm stalled and just stayed and kept pounding away for so long. There were parts of the state that got four feet of snow.”
The heaviest of the snowfall occurred in Sharon, Massachusetts, which received over 30 inches, reports NBC Boston.
“We’ve been through several big storms since then, and with Mike [Jagoda] at the helm, we and our emergency management team and our facilities people have done pretty well,” said Lavallee. “Students who are here on campus will be taken care of.”