Snow covers the trees in front of Macky Auditorium. (Andrew Scales/CU Independent)
As of 8:22 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the Unversity of Colorado Boulder announced that classes have been canceled and most of the campus will be closed on Wednesday, Feb 2.
“CU Boulder has issued a Class Cancellation and Administrative Closure for Wednesday, Feb. 2 due to winter storm impacts,” read an alert sent out via text and email to university community members.
In-person and synchronous remote classes have been canceled, but asynchronous online classes will not be affected by the closure.
According to the university, an administrative closure means that ” administrative functions of the campus are closed,” but services like road clearing, dining and safety will remain operational.
A winter storm warning from the National Weather Service is in effect for heavy snowstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Snow began falling at around 2:15 on Tuesday afternoon. Experts say the snowfall is expected to continue and increase in severity, causing potential hazards on the road as the snow sticks to the pavement.
“All said and done it looks like there will be 8-13 inches of snow,” said Russell Danielson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder.
He said that the worst time for traveling will be the night of Feb. 1 and the morning of Feb. 2. According to Danielson, the temperatures will likely reach negative values on Wednesday night.
Last week, CU Boulder Today gave an insight into how the university handles closure decisions based on weather. There are three options that the university decides between. For any of the options, the university is typically able to announce a decision by 5:30 a.m.
The first option is to continue with classes as usual. All remote or in-person classes will remain open throughout the day. The president, chancellor or a designee decides if classes are to remain open or if they will be canceled due to inclement weather.
The second option would be a delayed start. With this option, the university would give a designated cut-off time for classes that will be held. Any class scheduled to start before the cut-off time will be canceled (whether in-person or remote) and any class scheduled to start at or after the cut-off time will continue to be held.
The final option is a class cancellation. In this case, all synchronous classes, in-person or remote, will be canceled, while any asynchronous courses that don’t have identified class times will continue as usual. The last time the university canceled classes due to snowfall was on March 14, 2021.
Contact CU Independent Senior News Editor Erica McNamee at erica.mcnamee@colorado.edu.
