When the snow starts to fall on Oswego State, one wish pervades the student body: canceled classes.
However, the way the Oswego State administration comes to the decision to cancel classes takes more than just a grim forecast into consideration. Timing, severity, area of impact and a number of other factors are considered when making a decision to cancel classes.
According to Nicholas Lyons, the Oswego State vice president for administration and finance, the administration consults local meteorologist Wayne Mahar for their weather data.
Mahar is the chief meteorologist for CNY Central news in Syracuse, and the founder and president of Precision Weather Service, a private forecasting firm that services hundreds of clients nationally, including Oswego State. The school has been using the services of PWS for over a decade.
“The decision [to cancel classes] is based solely on the safety conditions that the weather presents and of the weather forecast that is predicted,” Lyons said. “The safety and well-being of all members of our campus community are always our ultimate concern.”
According to Mahar, the typical procedure for tracking a weather event that may affect Oswego State starts with the opening of a channel of communication between the two.
“Every weather situation is different,” Mahar said. “What will usually happen is that, if there is a big storm that is well foreseen, I’ll be in touch usually the day before or a few days before, or I’ll even get a call from the university. I’ll transmit a text version of the forecast, the day before or the night before, and we’ll talk the night before and early in the morning around 4:30 a.m. to see if classes might need to be canceled or delayed.”
While Mahar provides the forecast and can predict the potential impacts of the weather on travel conditions, he cannot ultimately tell the administration whether or not they should cancel classes. That, he said, is their decision to make on their own.
According to Lyons, the administration’s leadership team begins discussing the forecasts and the necessity of a cancellation early in the mornings. For the cancellation on Feb. 7, weather data was assessed at 5 a.m. so the decision to cancel could be made by 6 a.m.
Lyons said that 6 a.m. is a deadline chosen by the administration to ensure that classes are canceled in an “orderly fashion,” and to give local media time to spread the word.
Conditions considered by the administration include not just the weather on campus, or in the city of Oswego, but also in the greater Syracuse area and the travel conditions between there and Oswego. Many Oswego State students and faculty commute from the Syracuse area, so inclement weather along Highway 481 can impact the commute for a significant number of students.
Even with the support of PWS, the administration does not always know when the weather will get bad in advance and is occasionally caught off-guard by changing patterns. On Feb. 7, the decision to cancel classes was made after 9 a.m., meaning that some students and faculty had already come to campus or begun their commutes.
“The weather forecast that we received at 5 a.m. that morning indicated a later start to the inclement weather,” Lyons said. “Our consultation at 5 a.m. indicated a later start of the snow event. When the weather shifted and snow started around 7 a.m., we reconvened and canceled classes as promptly as possible.”
While students are not required to attend classes, staff and faculty are not given the day off from work. As a SUNY campus, Oswego State is under the command of the New York State government, and only the governor can officially close state-owned campuses and buildings. Lyons said employees who cannot attend work during a weather-related cancellation of classes are still required to charge leave accruals as if they were taking a regular day off of work.
Mahar said that Oswego State has the added complication of nearby Lake Ontario, which can cause very severe snows in a relatively small band of land around the lakes shores.
“Particularly in Oswego you’re dealing with localized lake effect situations that a lot of our other school districts and universities don’t have to deal with,” Mahar said. “So it is more tricky for Oswego State than most of the other colleges that we forecast for.”
Nicole Hube | The Oswegonian
