01/17/2007

By ANNE KIM  / Associated Press

For the fourth work day in a row, Laurel Harrington opted to take the bus rather than slide through ice and snow on the bicycle she usually rides.

The 52-year-old said she waited in the cold Tuesday morning to squeeze into a standing-room-only bus, adding 10 minutes to her normal 30-minute commute.

"I'm tired of having snow," said Harrington, bundled up in boots, a parka and a hat.

While she has biked to work for the past 13 years, Harrington said she takes the bus a few times each year because of poor weather. But this is the longest period she has had to forgo riding her bike because of weather, she said.

At least an inch of snow has been on the ground in the Seattle area since the evening of Jan. 10, making this the longest period in more than a decade that snow has stayed continuously on the ground, said Johnny Burg, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

The last time snow lingered on the ground for more than a couple days was in January 1996, when snow stuck around for four days, Burg said.

Those venturing out in traffic have seen treacherous ice and snow conditions first hand.

About 35 miles east of Seattle, a 30-vehicle collision Tuesday morning on Interstate 90 included a tractor-trailer rig that collided with a State Patrol trooper's vehicle. That mess closed all westbound lanes of I-90 east of North Bend for five hours.

Many Western Washington drivers haven't driven in such conditions before and don't know how to navigate through them, said Trooper Jeff Merrill, a State Patrol spokesman. The region typically doesn't get a lot of snow in the metro areas and that's why it's so challenging for road crews and drivers, he said.

The current snow started to fall during the Jan. 10 evening commute. State Patrol records showed 227 traffic collisions and approximately 600 calls for service in King County between 6 p.m. Jan. 10 and noon on Jan. 11.

While snow in the Seattle area isn't unusual, it usually melts within a day or so, Burg noted.

With Puget Sound and other waterways nearby, the Seattle region normally has temperate air and when cold air moves in, warmer air usually follows soon after, he added.

In this case, a cold air mass over the region has resulted in a lack of cloud cover, Burg said. Cloud cover acts as a blanket to insulate heat close to the ground and without it, heat escapes into the atmosphere, keeping the air cold and snow on the ground, he said.

Fresh snow early Tuesday led to school closures for more than 380,000 students.

Two fresh inches of snow fell by 10 a.m. Tuesday at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, on top of the existing inch.

Conditions on I-90 east of North Bend included gusty winds, blowing snow and compact snow and ice on the highway when the big rig jackknifed and collided with the trooper's car, Merrill said.

The trooper, who was unhurt, had been assisting a car that had rolled over about 15 minutes earlier at the same site, Merrill said. A truck towing a trailer came next, hitting the side of the tractor-trailer rig. Other vehicles soon followed, resulting in the 30-vehicle pileup, he said.

Only minor injuries were reported.

Still, motorists were better prepared for Tuesday's snow than last week's storm, Merrill said.

Fewer vehicles were on the road and those that were typically didn't encounter as many problems because they slowed their speed or had chains or snow tires, he said.

Between midnight Monday and noon Tuesday, the State Patrol received 74 reports of collisions and 116 calls for service in King County, Merrill said.