Editor’s note: Readers shared stories on social media about their treacherous Wednesday evening commutes. Some of their comments were edited for clarity and brevity.
• I work in Vancouver and live in Wilsonville, Ore. I left work at 3 p.m. when I started seeing flurries in Vancouver without realizing it would be worse farther south. Traffic was completely stopped more than 30 minutes at a time while traveling across the Marquam Bridge in Portland. It took me a total of two hours to traverse that bridge. After that, traffic picked up a bit, as in it moved a little. I stayed on Interstate 5 the whole way home, because back roads were too sketchy. I only saw one car and one van slip and slide. Everyone else seemed to being doing fine; they just moved really, really, really slowly. I made it home around 10 p.m. I guess slow and safe is better, but when it takes you seven hours to get home, that’s only a small relief. I worked from home Thursday.
— Ashley Maginnis
• “I’m going to leave early today to avoid traffic,” said everybody.
— Norman David Seubert
• We left the Portland International Airport at about 8 p.m. It took us almost two and a half hours to get from the terminal to Interstate 205, and another hour to get to Battle Ground. The drive home was almost as long as the flight from Maui. Finally got home at about 11:30 p.m.
— Noma Rice Moore
• There was 1.5 inches of snow. It took us five hours to drive into Portland and back for dinner. In Indiana, we called that a dusting. Here, they call it snowmageddon.
— Curtis Sprague
• It took me two hours to get from the Vancouver Mall to Washougal. I saw so many stranded drivers. It was sad and scary!
— Milinda Calvin Foley
• The roads were very slick. People were driving too fast for conditions and being impatient. I learned to drive in the wintertime in Utah, and over the years have learned many things the hard way as to driving in snow and ice. Best practices are a slow and steady speed, lightly pumping the brakes way ahead of when needed to avoid a skid into the intersection or hitting another car.
— Meredith McKell Graff
• I work in Hillsboro, Ore., and live in Salmon Creek. My route home typically takes 60 to 90 minutes. Wednesday, I left the office at 3 p.m. — the “p.m.” will be important later in this story — hoping to leave before the roads got too bad. Unfortunately, it wasn’t early enough. I got stuck with several other cars climbing up the hill on Germantown Road, where I narrowly avoided sliding into the ditch. I turned around and successfully drove back down the hill. It was 4:30 p.m., and I had lost an hour and a half to my failed attempt of taking my normal route home. I back-tracked on Cornelius Pass Road to Highway 26 and decided to take the safe route and just deal with the traffic. I was stuck at the Canyon Road overpass from 10:50 to 11:50 p.m. without moving an inch, and I decided to turn my car off to save gas. That was a mistake. Once traffic began to move again, my car stalled. I was stuck in the left lane watching all of the drivers pass me, looking at me as if the whole mess was my fault. Thankfully, a good Samaritan jump started my car, and I finally got home at 2 a.m. Total trip time: 11 hours.
— Joel Allen
• It took my dad six hours to get from the Paul Bunyan statue on Interstate Avenue in Portland to Vancouver near Evergreen High School. He’s off at 3:30 p.m. and pulled into his driveway around 9:30 p.m.
— Kara Marmon
• I was trying to get home from the Portland airport on Wednesday night. It was an 8.5 mile trip back to Vancouver and took seven hours. Saw fist fights, accidents and frustration.
— Barbara Carson
• Wednesday night, my world was rocked by my daughter when she said, “Dad, do you know it is taking some people four hours to get to PDX?” She knew I had to pick up my wife at the Portland airport at 7:30 p.m. I was ignorant and got on the road. On Interstate 205, there were lots of cars stalled, two that slid onto walls or medians, and trucks pulled over to chain up. It looked like one driver who sped around me slid out a mile or so later and abandoned his car. It took me 45 minutes to get to the airport, though I live just across the Columbia River near the Vancouver Mall. The bigger challenge was getting back. We inched forward in lines of cars and got home in 90 minutes, texting our daughter that we made it home OK.
— Jon Drury
