Portland Driver Describes 'Hair-Raising' Winter Storm

 Jan Wesner Childs

Published: February 23, 2023

Vikki Iverson was at a conference in Portland, Oregon, when Winter Storm Piper moved in Wednesday.

W​ith only a few miles to drive at the end of her day, she inched through traffic and cars stuck on the road. T​hen she hit the Interstate 5 bridge, where several vehicles were blocking the way.

"Behind us are five lanes of rush hour traffic and it's starting to get dark," Iverson recalled in a video interview Thursday. "And with all the traffic behind us backing up for miles, it would have been impossible for police to get through because the side lanes were full of cars as well."

(MORE: Snow Drifts Create A Highway To Nowhere In Wyoming)

Winds were whipping, and the storm made for a white-knuckle commute.

"There's heavy snowfall. You can't even see across the river," Iverson said.

“It was just a very unsettling feeling to feel that sway and feel that wind with all the snow blowing around. And knowing that the first responders can't get to you and you just have to figure it out.”

The snowy scene on a Portland bridge on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023.

She and other Good Samaritans took matters into their own hands.

“So a bunch of people got out and we started trying to dig the other cars out and shove them and at least get them going," Iverson said.

T​hey cleared the way enough to get traffic flowing again. But in the meantime, conditions continued to deteriorate on the other side of the bridge.

Iverson described it this way: “So now going down the bridge, there's a ton of fresh snow and slick ice and you're going down the tallest bridge over the Willamette River in Portland, which was hair-raising."

She made it through OK. Others weren't so lucky - b​y morning, abandoned and wrecked cars littered streets and highways in the city.

(​Brandon Burton contributed to this report)

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.