Why do Universities resist closing during bad weather?

[DetlefK]

8. As for the students I don't know, but the scientists HAVE to come.

They have schedules for conducting experiments and/or for handing in reports.

And sometimes you just can't leave a machine unsupervised for more than half a day.

If something goes wrong, a day lost can mean a week lost or worse.
(One Friday afternoon, a colleague of mine went home, with the incubator still running. She had been feeding and catering the bacteria all week and needed them after the weekend for an experiment. Somebody else came in after her and switched off the incubator because it was running unsupervised or wasting electricity or whatever. When my colleague returned on Monday, the bacterias were dead and her whole measurement-plan was thrown into disarray.)