The bright yellow front-end loader scooped up a shovelful from a huge pile of snow just outside the gate area of Terminal D at BWI Marshall Airport and rolled over to a melting machine. Lifting the snow high into the air, it let it tumble into the melter - stationed strategically over the airport's water drainage system.

This action, repeated many times by dozens of similar vehicles, was part of the grueling process of getting BWI, with its 22 million square feet of pavement, back into the business of dispatching and receiving planes.

Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of employees and contractors - and an estimated 350 pieces of equipment - the airport is expected to swing back into full operation today. It was the second time in a week that BWI had to dig out runways, taxiways and gate areas after a powerful storm. Since last Friday, it has measured 44.3 inches of snow - 19.5 inches in the latest blast Wednesday.

During an early-morning tour Thursday, BWI chief executive Paul J. Wiedefeld described how the airport had mobilized to uncover the sprawling complex and make it safe for airliners to land and take off. He said airport workers had been working around the clock, with a breather Monday, since the first storm moved in at the end of last week.

"It's like a combat operation where you have to provide all the support, from the food to the fuel to the sleeping" accommodations, he said.

Removing snow from an airport is much different from plowing a highway, Wiedefeld said. It's not enough to push mounds of snow off to the side of a runway, where a jet's wing could clip it. The snow has to be hauled away or launched onto the grass with a snowblower capable of dispersing it over a wide area.

Requirements for the runways are different from those on the taxiways and gate areas, he said. While planes can roll over dense, tamped-down snowpack on the way to or from a gate, just as many Marylanders are doing in their neighborhoods, jetliners shouldn't attempt landings or takeoffs on such a surface. So runways have to be scraped down to the surface.

A tour of the airport gave a reminder of the sheer number of places and things that must be uncovered for BWI to swing back into operation. Runway signs have to be dug out by hand. The fueling and food-service facilities must be excavated. The ends of the ramps that lead from the gates to the planes have to be swept out with a broom. And at the daily parking garage, a pile of snow soared dozens of feet high on the side of the nine-story structure, where plows had pushed snow off the roof.

For Wiedefeld, who recently returned to his old job as Maryland Aviation Administration administrator after a stint at the helm of the Maryland Transit Administration, the recent twin storms - along with the previous one in December - came with a healthy helping of deja vu. In early 2003, he was doing much the same thing.

"The last big snow, I was here. That's the big joke around here - that I bring the snow with me," he said.

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