Yampa airport sallies forth amid winter snow squalls

Craig Press file photo
The intensity of the holiday weekend’s wintry weather hasn’t significantly slowed activity at Yampa Valley Regional Airport.
Despite a Christmas Eve snow dump and a Boxing Day snow squall, airport director Kevin Booth said the YVRA schedules have mostly kept up.
“It isn’t extreme weather yet,” Booth said Tuesday. “So, (it’s) not anything we’re not used to dealing with. We’ve kept the runways and taxiways open and safe, and airplanes are coming and going. We deal with it like we do each season, and staffing is good, as is equipment. All that is going pretty well.”
Booth reported 40 commercial flights were scheduled Sunday and just three cancellations, none of which were due to weather near Hayden, he said.
“Some delays with weather that was visibility being restricted for not only flights taking off and landing but also for our guys seeing enough to do plowing,” Booth said. “That was an hour, hour-and-a-half on Sunday afternoon, so just a few delays.”
The canceled flights weren’t canceled by YVRA, Booth said.
“It was national — one of our airlines canceled a few on us around the Christmas holiday, but they’ve since resumed flights,” he said. “We were busy Saturday and Sunday and again (Tuesday) and (Wednesday).”
Booth said the majority of delays or cancellations at this time of year come as a result of what he called “transient” weather conditions.
“What I’d call those snow squalls,” he said. “That’s what hit us Sunday afternoon, and it lasted a little longer than we normally have. Those are usually short-duration events, with visibility down below the three-quarters of a mile we need to safely land aircraft. This was a little longer, and we’ll continue to see that. But nothing specific about this week’s weather looks like it will impact us for a significant amount of time.”

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