Washington state police spend 10 hours digging out cars buried by tumbleweeds on New Year's Eve
State troopers in Washington state spent 10 hours digging cars and a semitruck out from under hills of tumbleweeds that flooded a road on New Year's Eve in an event being dubbed "Tumblegeddon."
Washington State Patrol Trooper Chris Thorson told USA TODAY on Tuesday that his district began receiving 911 calls around 6:30 p.m. local time about tumbleweeds blocking the roadway in an area about 20 miles west of Richland, one of the state's Tri-Cities.
"One of our troopers was dispatched," he said. "When they arrived, they saw tumbleweeds in the roadway and there were cars trapped."
Thorson said five cars and one semitruck had to be meticulously uncovered — and only one car was abandoned, he said. The state's Department of Transportation sent snowplows to the scene, but it was slow going clearing the road, Thorson said.
We’re still working on clearing the roadway with @WSDOT_East . We are unsure when the roadway will be opened. Tumbleweeds are piled 20-30 feet in places. S.C. pic.twitter.com/zFbA3luscg
— Trooper C. Thorson (@wspd3pio) January 1, 2020
Winds were about 50 mph while authorities were trying to clear a stretch of road roughly the length of three football fields, Thorson said.
"When they got to a car, they had to manually uncover the car," he said.
Tumbleweeds are a common occurrence on this stretch of road — "like a desert plateau", Thorson said. Still, he said that in more than 20 years of being a state trooper in the area, he's never seen something like "Tumblegeddon."
Cult connections? Man links 'radical' religious group to his attempted murder in Arizona and 2 missing children in Idaho
"Visibility was bad, which caused cars to slow down," he said. "When they stopped, the tumbleweeds were piling so fast, they just fully engulfed in minutes. It’s kind a strange mixture of weather and circumstances,
"I don’t know how to really explain it. It’s just odd. It’s so odd because it doesn’t happen. Typically, 99 percent of the time, you can drive through tumbleweeds."
No one was hurt in the incident, Thorson said.
"Any time you have a snow blizzard or blowing dust or icy roads, the problem is cars keep coming into the area at 60 mph," Thorson said. "It was New Year's Eve. It was 20 miles outside of town. We got lucky no one else came into the area fast and caused a pileup."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Tumblegeddon': Tumbleweeds bury cars on Washington state highway
