PITTSFIELD — Snow piled nearly 10 feet high at Pittsfield Municipal Airport on Monday as crews worked to clear runways buried under almost two feet of powder from a storm that was still delivering surprises.

Although no flights were scheduled to land Monday, a crew of five airport employees kept the runways open for emergency use.

On Monday, the runways were rated a three on a scale of zero to five, with five being perfect conditions and zero requiring closure.

Anita Akor gives a tour of the Pittsfield Municipal Airport runways after a winter storm.

Acting airport manager Anita Akor demonstrated how she rates the runways using her feet to scuff at the snow-covered pavement to see how it responds.

Akor said the speed of the snowfall — 2 inches per hour — presented difficulty.

“It came down real quick,” she said. “So we lost visibility. That was one of the main challenges of this storm.”

As she gave The Eagle a tour of the runways, the windshield wipers of the Ram 1500 she was driving swept at freezing rain.

“That was not in the forecast,” Akor said. “The freezing rain complicates things, especially on the runway, because we will have to leave the snow on there to catch the freezing rain and then we can plow it. If we plow everything and then the freezing rain falls onto the pavement, it automatically turns into ice and then we don’t have any traction."

The last aircraft to land was a Falcon jet, which flew in at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday and took off about a half hour later, according to Akor. She said it was likely dropping off passengers ahead of the snow, which started at about 9 a.m. Sunday.

Akor got to the airport at 5 a.m. Monday and expected to stay until 5 p.m. blowing snow off runway lights and doing cleanup with seasonal and part-time laborers.

She’s one of five people doing the work right now. There’s a vacancy for a maintenance technician on staff, and given the amount of work it takes to maintain 532 acres, Akor wishes she could budget for an additional employee.

The maintenance building at Pittsfield Municipal Airport houses the equipment for maintaining the 532 acres.

Airport staff maintains about 3 linear miles of roadway, including the taxiways.

Akor said the weather can be different at the airport than in downtown Pittsfield based on a 1,000-foot elevation difference. The airport stands at 1,188 feet in elevation while downtown's elevation is 1,039.

The annual budget for the airport is about $377,493.

While Akor is salaried at $82,000, she expects this storm will cost about $3,400 in wages and overtime. She was uncertain whether the airport crew would need to apply 10, 50-pound bags of deicing material, which could add about $3,000 to the cost of cleanup.

In recent years, the airport hasn’t had deicing material, but this year, it was built into the budget, she said.

To clear the snow off the runways, a wing plow is followed by a smaller truck, and the finishing work is done with smaller equipment and snowblowers.

As the airport’s acting manager, Akor, 30, now oversees everything from budgets to blizzards — a responsibility that grew out of her early interest in aviation and her years working at the facility.

A native of Ghana, Akor’s first flight was at the age of 12. She flew on a Delta jet from Accra, Ghana, to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The experience sparked her interest in becoming a pilot. She later reconsidered based on the expense, but was still strongly interested in the field of aviation.

After graduating from Taconic High School in 2014, she received a bachelor of science degree in aviation management with a minor in accounting from Bridgewater State University.

She was hired in December 2018 as the assistant airport manager. In 2023, she became a certified member of the American Association of Airport Executives. She was named acting manager after Daniel Shearer left the job in September.

Standing 5 feet 1 inch tall, she said it took her six months to get used to operating heavy equipment. To do so safely, she has to make adjustments to the seat position and mirrors to maximize her own visibility and to avoid collisions.

“Every day is something different,” Akor said of her job. “You go from plowing to mowing to chasing wildlife, so it’s never the same thing. It never gets boring."