Rare ice storms bring gridlock to Salem and Willamette Valley

The series of ice storms that crippled the Willamette Valley over Presidents Day weekend only comes about once every few decades, but when it does, it makes a big impact. 

Numerous roads remain closed from Salem to Portland, more than 300,000 homes and businesses are without power and tens of thousands of trees came down under the weight of more than an inch of ice. 

The good news is that Western Oregon's weather has moved back into a more normal pattern of temperatures in the upper 30s and 40s with bouts of non-freezing rain and snow in the mountains. 

What just happened?! 

The most impactful of the three winter storms to hit Salem came Friday night, and it was the product of multiple factors all lining up at once in an event that only happens once every 20 to 25 years, said National Weather Service meteorologist Clinton Rockey. 

It started with extremely cold air coming in from the eastern Rocky Mountains, through the Columbia River Gorge and into the Mid-Willamette Valley on Thursday and Friday.

The second ingredient was precipitation, rolling in from the Pacific Ocean, that hit the cold air mass and turned into up to a foot of snow in the Portland Metro Area.

In the Mid-Valley, however, the cold air mass wasn’t deep enough to keep the precipitation as snow all the way to the ground. 

“In Salem and the Mid-Valley, the precipitation started out falling as snow but hit a slightly warmer layer that turned it back into rain,” Rockey said. “But the temperature on the ground was below freezing so the water froze almost as soon as it hit the ground.”

The result was roughly 1.25 inches of ice that accumulated Friday night in the Salem area, on top of a layer of ice that fell Thursday night.

“Trees really can’t support very much ice,” Rockey said. “The weaker trees go first, but when you’re talking about that much ice, it will impact even very large ones.”

Storm cripples the Willamette Valley roads

In addition to the power outages, numerous roads have been closed across the valley due to downed trees and power lines.

Marion County spokeswoman Jolene Kelley said county crews have been working to reopen smaller rural roads and hope to be completed by Tuesday morning. 

Water also has become an issue for people who use wells and cannot bring up water without electricity. 

Kelley said many small towns were working on setting up warming centers and places where people could come and charge their cell phones and warm-up, in addition to possibly getting water. However, finding a location large enough has proven a challenge.

Cell phones and Internet also impacted 

Cell phones and the Internet also appear to have been impacted by the storms. 

There have been numerous reports of cell phones and Internet outages throughout the Salem and Northwest Oregon area, although there has been no official comment from cell phone companies. 

Maps from the website DownDetector.com, which tracks cell phone outages, identified the Willamette Valley as a hotspot for outages for both Verizon and AT&T. 

Mill City mayor Tim Kersh said that while his town had mostly seen its power restored, "the loss of cell and Internet service is the biggest ongoing problem now." 

The same issue has been reported across social media. 

Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter, photographer and videographer in Oregon for 13 years. To support his work, subscribe to the Statesman Journal. Urness can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.