Wet weather, crashes make for ugly morning commute around Puget Sound

Wet weather and a high volume of crashes made for an ugly Tuesday morning commute in the Puget Sound area.

KIRO Radio Traffic Reporter Chris Sullivan said despite no major blocking events big backups materialized.

“This is worse than last Monday when we had a jack-knifed semi blocking all lanes of I-5 in Northgate. The backups today were worse,” said Sullivan.

Southbound I-5 saw some of the biggest delays with WSDOT reporting commutes hitting 135 minutes from Everett to Seattle and 105 minutes from Lynnwood into downtown.

“I can’t remember a morning where 1 route (SB 5 into Seattle) has had so many collisions. Please focus and give each other space,” WSDOT Traffic tweeted calling the commute “absurdly bad.”

The delays weren’t limited to I-5.

“Of the 58 routes we track in our travel times, only 8 are running at normal or better times. Everything else is in the red,” WSDOT reported.

“If you can do anything but drive today, it’d be a good idea.”

Heavy rains were in the forecast with remnants of former Hurricane Ana, which doused Hawaii last week, bringing another round of rain and wind to Western Washington. The effects from this front are expected to taper off Tuesday.

KING 5’s Rich Marriott said things will dry out a little bit more on Wednesday.

“Tomorrow we catch a little bit of a break. There will be some showers around in the morning. I think those will pretty much wrap up turning partly sunny in the afternoon,” said Marriott. “It’s back to steady rain Thursday, showers Friday, probably showers around for trick or treating.”