This weekend’s closure of a section of state Highway 500 in Vancouver has been canceled due to forecasted rain.
Crews working for the Washington State Department of Transportation had planned to remove the stop lights at the intersections of Northeast 42nd Avenue/Falk Road and Northeast 54th Avenue/Stapleton Road and replace them with right-in/right-out interchanges.
Crews were set to close the highway in that area starting on Friday at 11 p.m. That’s no longer the case because of the fall weather.
“The weather forecast changed significantly overnight and there is not enough of a dry window to complete the work this weekend,” the transportation department said in a tweet.
The work will be rescheduled to a later date.
Transportation officials had predicted that the schedule for the road’s reconfiguration may change.
“It is the end of October in the Northwest,” WSDOT spokeswoman Tamara Greenwell previously told The Columbian. “We have a good weather window Friday and most of the day Saturday, but we need absolutely dry weather for the paint to dry.”
The paint is a key element of this project because, in addition to building traffic barriers, crews will restripe the highway and the side streets to redirect traffic onto and off the highway.
Officials gave no immediate timeline for when the project would get underway.
The National Weather Service in Portland says there are chances of rain in Vancouver through at least Thursday. The weather service reported that rain is certain on Saturday night.
“New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible,” the forecast says.
