Following a day in which a light snowstorm brought Oregon’s largest city to a halt, abandoned vehicles started popping up on the streets of Portland.
Despite dropping only 1 to 3 inches of snow around the Portland area on Wednesday, the accumulated ice and rush-hour traffic created havoc on the streets as some motorists even started abandoning their cars in order to proceed on-foot.
For environmental reasons, the Portland area does not use rock salt, as reported by the Daily News. “Right now they use gravel but they have to do something more than what they were doing last night, because it was unbearable,” said a man who needed 8 hours to get from Seattle to just north of Portland – otherwise an under 3 hour drive.
“We might get to barely above freezing, but it would only be for an hour or two,” stated meteorologist Colby Neuman. “The snow that we have in Portland is going to stick around for the next couple of days.”
On Wednesday afternoon, commuters were already in trouble as cars began to fishtail, spin and collide with each other because of the conditions. Semi-trucks even started blocking Interstate 5, as some of them were unable to move to the side of the road before getting stuck.
Still, Portland city officials did declare parking meter amnesty, allowing drivers to leave their cars parked overnight without penalties, which was definitely the sensible thing to do.