Sunday’s blanket of snow turned to sheets of ice Monday morning, but forecasters expected an easier commute Tuesday.
A weather advisory from the National Weather Service said only pockets of light freezing were expected until about 10 a.m. Tuesday with ice accumulations of up to a tenth of an inch possible in some areas, mainly the Columbia River Gorge and higher-elevation terrain around the Vancouver and Portland metro areas.
After 10 a.m., expect more rainfall, but not the freezing kind, forecasters said. Temperatures could reach the mid-30s in Vancouver on Tuesday.
In Clark County, there were at least 25 reports of crashes Monday, according to call log data from the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency. Eric Frank, a spokesman for the agency, said he didn’t have exact numbers handy, but he knew call takers were busy.
“It was slick, with some slide-offs … this morning,” he said.
Many residential streets and rural roads were icy, and lighter-than-normal traffic could be seen on the county’s freeways and major highways Monday morning.
Several C-Tran bus routes were switched to snow routes, and C-Tran suspended one line. One bus, on Route 3, slid at West 22nd Street and Kaufman Avenue around 7:30 a.m., blocking traffic there, agency spokeswoman Christine Selk said. No collisions or injuries were reported.
Jeff Mize, a spokesman for Clark County Public Works, reported varying road conditions along the county’s 2,700 lane miles of roads.
“Some streets, especially in the urban areas, are well traveled and pretty easy-going, then you get on the side streets and it’s a completely different story — it’s treacherous,” Mize said. “Areas that have particularly difficult driving conditions include portions of east Clark County outside Camas and Washougal and the Mount Vista area, near Washington State University Vancouver.”
The city of Vancouver concentrated its efforts on major arterials, with crews out all night and Monday morning, according to a news release. The city has about 1,800 miles of roads.
Vancouver Public Works crews were out as early as 3 a.m. plowing and de-icing roads, as were county crews.
Mize said county road crews were still out and about into the afternoon but were starting to see the ice break up as temperatures warmed.
That’s progress, he said. Crews were working to clear slush and ice around catch basins so water can drain properly.
“That’s a priority,” he said. “So if we do refreeze (Monday night), we won’t be a skating rink tomorrow morning.”
Mize said he expected the process would repeat Tuesday morning, with crews ready to get on the road well before sunrise.
Vancouver Public Works said that although a repeat of Monday’s icy weather doesn’t seem as likely, spotty freezing is possible and department staff will be watching the weather.
As of 10 p.m. Monday, Woodland and Ridgefield school districts said they’d have two-hour late starts to the school day Tuesday. Washougal and Hockinson schools also planned to start with a two-hour delay.
The districts said morning preschool was canceled in Hockinson, and Washougal buses would be using snow routes.
Clark Public Utilities spokeswoman Erica Erland said in an email that the power utility saw a few small outages around the county, but they were addressed quickly.
“If ice continues to accumulate there may be additional outages due to tree limbs falling,” she said. “But so far there hasn’t been a large impact on our system because of the weather.”
