Oregonians woke to ice-coated cars and streets Saturday morning, and a promise of improving conditions as temperatures began to climb after days of abnormal cold.
Most flight departures from the Portland International Airport remained grounded on Christmas Eve morning, due to delays and cancelations. Travelers took to social media, reporting packed flights as people rushed to reach their destinations ahead of Christmas.
By 9 a.m., about 1,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity across Oregon, mostly in the Portland metro area and Central Oregon near Redmond. Ten times as many utility users faced power failures a day earlier.
Portland's Pearl district, in this high-angle view, appears void of people outside on Friday, Dec. 23, 2022. Saturday dawned with more below-freezing temperatures, but forecasters expected warmer weather later in the day.
Courtesy of Katia Alcantar
And roads crews across the state continued to dig out from snow and ice. Interstate 84 between Pendleton and Ontario reopened Saturday morning around 10 a.m., but it remained closed between Troutdale and Hood River with no reopening estimate available from the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Current updates about road conditions across the state are available at https://tripcheck.com/.
Multnomah County and Portland officials closed emergency warming shelters by 8 a.m. Saturday due to warming weather, though snow and ice still coated much of the region. More than 1,000 people accessed these shelters the day prior.
Several TriMet public transportation services, including its bus and MAX train routes, continued to experience delays Saturday afternoon due to “weather and staffing issues,” the agency wrote in service alerts.
Clouds conceal the view of Mount Emily on the outskirts of La Grande, Ore., on Friday, Dec. 23, 2022. Several major roads in the area were closed on Saturday morning due to weather conditions.
Francisca Benitez / OPB
Although much of Western Oregon and Southwest Washington was expected to be above freezing by late Saturday morning, meteorologists cautioned that it could take longer before overall conditions improve.
The National Weather Service put the Portland metro area, the northern Oregon Cascades, Southwest Washington and Central Willamette Valley under winter weather advisories through 4 p.m., and warned that travel could be challenging due to ice accumulation, even as temperatures were expected to climb above freezing.
“Warmer, moist air streaming inland across the Pacific Northwest will overrun cold air trapped in valleys which could yield mixed precipitation or significant icing,” the National Weather Service wrote in a statement.
