All of Washington State’s mountain passes are impassable right now due to heavy snow

The low­land snow that fell across much of West­ern Wash­ing­ton between Christ­mas and New Year’s Day may have melt­ed, but up in the Cas­cade Moun­tains, it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry, as Mike Lind­blom reports:

There’s no way to dri­ve across Wash­ing­ton state’s moun­tains until some­time this week­end, as the worst com­bi­na­tion of snow and rain in many years has closed all four of the state’s win­ter high­way routes between east and west.

A white­out snow­storm ear­ly Thurs­day, fol­lowed by freez­ing rain and a half-foot or more of snow in the fore­cast, forced the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to close Sno­qualmie, Stevens, White and Blewett passes.

Some of Wash­ing­ton’s moun­tain pass­es — for instance, Wash­ing­ton, Cayuse, and Chi­nook — are always closed dur­ing the win­ter sea­son. But Sno­qualmie (which I‑90 pass­es over), Stevens (which U.S. 2 pass­es over) and White (which U.S. 12 pass­es over) are kept open, at least to the extent that’s feasible.

Today, WSDOT con­clud­ed that it would nei­ther be safe nor sen­si­ble to try to open any of those pass­es (which have seen inter­mit­tent clo­sures over the last few weeks) to auto and freight traf­fic any­time soon. The weath­er is just that bad.

The depart­ment explained its posi­tion to the trav­el­ing pub­lic in a series of tweets:

Evening update: Sno­qualmie, Stevens, White & Blewett pass­es remain closed. 

Because of the con­di­tions and amount of work need­ed to safe­ly re-open, our pass­es will like­ly remain closed until Sunday.

Con­di­tions are too dan­ger­ous for crews to be in the pass areas. Snow & debris con­tin­ue to slide onto the high­ways. Crews are work­ing in areas where it is safe to plow, clear catch basins & do oth­er work to have those areas ready when we can reopen.

More snow and pos­si­bly rain is in the fore­cast for the pass­es tonight. This will only increase the avalanche danger.

If it is safe to do so, we will spend all day Fri­day address­ing avalanche issues to cre­ate a safe work zone. Once avalanche work is done, we will spend Sat­ur­day clear­ing the areas, includ­ing plow­ing and treat­ing roads, remov­ing snow/ice from signs, clear­ing trees & debris from the road and clear­ing catch basins for drainage.

In low­lands, heavy rain in sev­er­al areas of the state will increase flood & washout dan­ger. Sev­er­al rivers are under advi­sories with risks to increase as snow melt con­tin­ues. There is high dan­ger of downed trees due to sat­u­rat­ed soil, heavy snow & rain.

In East­ern WA, rain/flooding is a con­cern as is snow and strong winds, includ­ing in the Palouse.

Blow­ing and drift­ing snow pro­duce low vis­i­bil­i­ty and chal­leng­ing con­di­tions lead­ing to road clo­sures and pos­si­bly pow­er outages.

We rec­og­nize the impor­tance of these cor­ri­dors but noth­ing is more impor­tant than the safe­ty of our crews and the public.

We are pre­pared to move in once it is safe, and we appre­ci­ate your patience dur­ing this chal­leng­ing situation.

To the south, ODOT was forced to tem­porar­i­ly close Inter­state 84 to all traf­fic through the Colum­bia Riv­er Gorge. The depart­ment reopened the high­way after clear­ing a debris slide, at around 7:30 PM Pacif­ic, but advised that unsafe con­di­tions could prompt anoth­er clo­sure at any time.

Sno­qualmie Pass has seen more snow in recent days than at any time in the past few decades. While it’s nice to have a robust snow­pack ear­ly in the sea­son, it seems that late­ly, we’re get­ting too much of every­thing. Too many dry stretch­es that yield con­di­tions ripe for fires to spread. Too many rainy spells that result in flood­ing. And now too many snow­storms that make trav­el difficult.

Sci­en­tists have warned for years that more extreme weath­er (of all sorts and in all sea­sons) would be a con­se­quence of cli­mate dam­age. And that is pre­cise­ly what we are see­ing now. This mul­ti-day shut­down of the pass­es will impede mobil­i­ty, freight, and com­merce, but it can’t be helped. Allow­ing peo­ple to attempt a jour­ney over any of the pass­es would be a recipe for disaster.

Safe­ty comes first, as WSDOT said. The depart­ment can’t wave a mag­ic wand and make the avalanche threat go away, nor can its crews snap their fin­gers and turn off the snow from the skies above. Those need­ing to get across the moun­tains will either have to wait or book a flight. (Alaska/Horizon offers mul­ti­ple dai­ly cross state flights, includ­ing Seat­tle <> Spokane and Seat­tle <> Yakima.)

Amtrak’s Empire Builder, which makes use of the Cas­cade Tun­nel oper­at­ed by BNSF Rail­way, was also can­celed today, although tomor­row’s depar­ture to Spokane and points east is list­ed as “On Time.” The sec­ond Cas­cade Tun­nel, built near­ly one hun­dred years ago, allows trains to tra­verse the snowy Cas­cades even in extreme­ly win­try con­di­tions such as those we have seen lately.

In hap­pi­er news, WSDOT report­ed that it has cleared a long stretch of U.S. 101 between Hood­sport and State Route 104, reopen­ing that route to traf­fic. A block­age on State Route 510 at Mud Moun­tain Road has also been cleared.