PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — With most of two days without new precipitation, several surface streets across Portland remained covered in snow — and namely, ice.
Sunshine helped mostly Friday, according to Oregon Department of Transportation spokesperson Don Hamilton, but the temperatures remained cool enough to keep inches of ice crusted over streets stuck in shade.
“The roads are still very tricky, very dangerous out there,” Hamilton told KOIN 6 News on Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, Commissioner of PBOT Mingus Mapps visited maintenance facilities said that abandoned cars have been the biggest hurdle.
When asked Friday, Mayor Ted Wheeler defended the response by the Portland Bureau of Transportation, passing the buck to the forecast, saying “I think we all wish they could predict the weather with 100 percent certainty.”
“I think they responded the best they could with the resources they had and the information they had going into it,” Wheeler continued.
Eye on Northwest Politics host Ken Boddie asked Governor Tina Kotek about the statewide response. Kotek also blamed the forecast but said the state will further evaluate with more time.
“I think they would have if we’d had a better forecast. I mean, the reality is when the roads are wet you can’t put the deicer down. We’ll have plenty of time for figuring out if we could have done things differently, right now we’re focused on making sure those roads are clear,” Kotek said.
Both PBOT and ODOT say deicer started being deployed Wednesday, once the snow started falling. However, Wheeler said the traffic that snarled the public caught plows as well.
In the aftermath, ODOT and PBOT plows have deployed a “skimming” approach, keeping plows above the pavement by a quarter to a full inch depending on the circumstance.
KOIN 6 checked with other states about the strategies they use.
Some, like Colorado, use scraping — which is putting plows directly or as close as possible to the pavement to get under the snow and ice. John Lorme, the maintenance and operations director for the Colorado Department of Transportation says their plows have “shoes” keeping the plows a few centimeters above the pavement, but says the strategy is more effective.
“Getting as close as possible costs more, but it improves safety for the traveling public,” Lorme said in a statement.
KOIN 6 asked if during this historic storm if it was worth lowering plows.
“That’s where you start to damage the road. That’s where you start to damage the plows,” Hamilton said. “No.”
With another round of snow a possibility for Portland’s near future, ODOT was asked if the department is thinking about doing anything differently going forward.
“We need to make sure that when the precipitation starts that we stay ahead of it, that means that we get out there with all of our tools, with the salt with the sand with the plows and the deicer and that we stay ahead of it.”