Mudslides, washouts have made key sections of Cascadia’s major highways impassable

Mud­slides and washouts pre­cip­i­tat­ed by tor­ren­tial rain­fall have made high­ways on both sides of the Unit­ed States — Cana­da bor­der impass­able, strand­ing trav­el­ers and fur­ther dis­rupt­ing com­merce just days before the onset of the hol­i­day season.

On the U.S. side, some of the worst flood­ing and road impacts were in low-lying parts of What­com and Skag­it coun­ties, which are locat­ed between Seat­tle and Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia in the state’s north­west­ern corner.

As of just after dusk on Mon­day, Novem­ber 15th, Inter­state 5 was closed in both direc­tions between Belling­ham and Mount Ver­non at Lake Samish, with State Route 511 and State Route 9 also report­ed to be impass­able. No detour routes are avail­able, which means dri­vers’ only option is to turn around.

In a bul­letin, WSDOT advised:

Both direc­tions of I‑5 between North Lake Samish Dri­ve (mile­post 247) and Nulle Road (mile­post 245) in south What­com Coun­ty will be closed overnight due to water over the road and debris slides. No detour routes will be in place for these closures.

Tomor­row morn­ing, WSDOT will eval­u­ate the hill­side along north­bound I‑5 to deter­mine the next steps. The issues on south­bound I‑5 are relat­ed to water over the road­way 6–8 inch­es deep, which WSDOT will work to address dur­ing the day­light hours tomor­row. Trav­el­ers should not attempt to go around the clo­sures for everyone’s safety.

What’s next:

There are mul­ti­ple oth­er high­way clo­sures through­out What­com and Skag­it coun­ties due to flood­ing and slides. 

Our crews will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor and assess con­di­tions and will reopen when it is safe to do so. 

Find infor­ma­tion about local road clo­sures, vis­it Pub­lic Works | What­com Coun­ty, WA — Offi­cial Web­site and Skag­it Coun­ty Pub­lic Works Road Closures.

The Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice pro­vides updat­ed weath­er alerts, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about flooding. 

What dri­vers should do in flood­ed areas:

• If you don’t need to be out on the roads, please stay home at the request of local jurisdictions.
• “Turn around, don’t drown.” Do not dri­ve through stand­ing water on the road­way. Not only is it dif­fi­cult to tell the con­di­tion of the road is under­neath the water, it only takes 6 inch­es of water on the road­way for vehi­cles to stall and 12 inch­es of water to car­ry a vehi­cle off the roadway.
• Observe all “Road Closed” signs — they are put in place for your safety.
• Be alert. WSDOT crews, pub­lic works, emer­gency respon­ders and util­i­ty crews are work­ing to clear and reopen roads as quick­ly and safe­ly as possible. 

The City of Belling­ham post­ed drone footage of the flood­ing in Belling­ham.

Here’s a KING5 report on the dam­age in What­com Coun­ty.

On the Cana­di­an side, mud­slides and washouts have destroyed greater Van­cou­ver’s road links with the rest of Cana­da and forced the Trans­Moun­tain pipeline and its expan­sion project to shut down.

Parts of the province have seen up to 230 mil­lime­tres of rain in just 48 hours, and rain­fall, snow­fall, win­ter storm and wind warn­ings remain in effect across most of south­ern B.C. Envi­ron­ment Cana­da is fore­cast­ing anoth­er 30 mil­lime­tres for areas that have been hit the hard­est by the relent­less rain that began on Sat­ur­day, fol­lowed by winds gust­ing up to 90 kilo­me­tres an hour.

The British Colum­bia Min­istry of Trans­porta­tion flew over the washout at Tank Hill near Lyt­ton and Nicomen, and post­ed pho­tos of the ruined high­way on Twit­ter. It will like­ly take months to repair this stretch of the Tran­sCana­da Highway.

If the name Lyt­ton sounds famil­iar, it’s prob­a­bly because that’s the same British Colum­bia town that was destroyed by a rag­ing fire only a few months ago.

Also impass­able is High­way 1, one of the main routes east of Vancouver.

“Dri­vers are advised that High­way 1 in the Fras­er Val­ley will be closed in both direc­tions as of 7 PM Mon­day, Novem­ber 15th,” provin­cial offi­cials said in a state­ment. “The high­way clo­sure is between High­way 11 and No. 3 Road, and is nec­es­sary due to the flood warn­ing on the Sumas River.”

The por­tion of High­way 5 known as the Coqui­hal­la High­way is impass­able too, with the south­bound lanes hav­ing sim­ply dis­ap­peared in one spot. The high­way is closed in both direc­tions between Mer­ritt and Hope. As of nine hours ago, all res­i­dents of Mer­ritt are under an evac­u­a­tion order due to the flood­ing.

Only a few weeks ago, the city was under an evac­u­a­tion alert due to wild­fires.

High­way 8, too, is closed in both direc­tions. BC Min­istry of Trans­porta­tion says that there is flood­ing between Por­cu­pine Ridge Rd and Petit Creek Road for 33.5 km (9 kilo­me­ters east of Spences Bridge to 17 kilo­me­ters west of Merritt).

There’s a gallery on Flickr of road dam­age across British Colum­bia.

If you’re won­der­ing if there are any major roads that haven’t been affect­ed by the flood­ing, the answer is basi­cal­ly no. This is a real­ly bad time to trav­el and the author­i­ties are ask­ing that peo­ple just stay home or stay put for now.

For those strand­ed, Cana­di­an Forces have been pro­vid­ing aer­i­al res­cues.

More rain is expect­ed overnight tonight. After that, Cas­ca­dia should get a break from the atmos­pher­ic riv­er that’s been dump­ing water on the PNW for most of the last few days. But it will take a long time to repair some of the dam­age men­tioned in this post, espe­cial­ly up in British Columbia.