Narrative:

Ground 1 and 2 were combined to local 2 due to the lack of staffing. Local 1 was staffed by a person that rarely works traffic and has no clue as to how to be helpful to the person with the most traffic. He could have ensured that they did not call me on ground until they were on [taxiway] ed. He could even ask them their gate and enter that on the asde-X and then ship them.the lack of proper staffing of ground control is what led to the unsafe event of total frequency congestion and workload saturation. There were braking action reports; snow removal activity on the airport and coordinators in the tower; RVR's to issue and monitor controllers not doing their job. No airspace assigned to local 2.later this same day myself and others worked ground 4 during heavy traffic with all departures on the west side of the airport. Ground 3 should have been open to relieve the frequency congestion. When multiple aircraft are calling ready to taxi out of all the deice pads and also at the ramp exit spots because some were not deicing; it is time to open ground 3. Oh; but let me guess; we didn't have the staffing to do that either. Reduce the arrival rate to one and a half runways so that snow equipment can keep up with cleaning runways and the controller that has to work combined positions with all kinds of distractions in the tower and on the airport can maintain the frequency.the airport ops needs to allow us to get a detailed description of the braking action before flipping out and closing a runway and causing multiple aircraft to unnecessarily go around. Denver TRACON needs to retrain everyone down there on the correct procedures of breaking an aircraft off the approach.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Denver Tower Controller reported various complaints due to staffing; weather and the traffic level.

Narrative: Ground 1 and 2 were combined to Local 2 due to the lack of staffing. Local 1 was staffed by a person that rarely works traffic and has no clue as to how to be helpful to the person with the most traffic. He could have ensured that they did not call me on ground until they were on [Taxiway] ED. He could even ask them their gate and enter that on the ASDE-X and then ship them.The lack of proper staffing of ground control is what led to the unsafe event of total frequency congestion and workload saturation. There were braking action reports; snow removal activity on the airport and coordinators in the tower; RVR's to issue and monitor controllers not doing their job. No airspace assigned to local 2.Later this same day myself and others worked Ground 4 during heavy traffic with all departures on the west side of the airport. Ground 3 should have been open to relieve the frequency congestion. When multiple aircraft are calling ready to taxi out of all the deice pads and also at the ramp exit spots because some were not deicing; it is time to open Ground 3. Oh; but let me guess; we didn't have the staffing to do that either. Reduce the arrival rate to one and a half runways so that snow equipment can keep up with cleaning runways and the controller that has to work combined positions with all kinds of distractions in the tower and on the airport can maintain the frequency.The airport ops needs to allow us to get a detailed description of the braking action before flipping out and closing a runway and causing multiple aircraft to unnecessarily go around. Denver TRACON needs to retrain everyone down there on the correct procedures of breaking an aircraft off the approach.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.