Alahn Ek left her Beaverton home Wednesday afternoon with some extra blankets and snacks. Though it was just raining when she left, she thought the 20-minute drive to a friend’s home North Portland might take a little longer with snow in the forecast. She finally arrived seven hours and an icy bridge later. “It was like I blinked,” she said, and the snow started falling. Ek was one of as snow suddenly hit the Portland metro area and brought traffic to a standstill. But Ek, and others who were stuck on the roads Wednesday night, said they were shocked by the lack of information about what was happening on the roads ahead of them. “I had been trying to look on Twitter, online, and there wasn’t much information,” she said. “I didn’t see any crews or professionals clearing the roads. ” Local and state agencies say they had planned for snow but were caught off guard by its sudden onset and severity, which broke records in just a few hours. As the storm hit, commuters made a break for home, clogging roads even more. And a shortage of state transportation workers slowed the response to an already overwhelming event. “We were prepared for the weather, but we weren’t prepared for an inch of snow falling an hour,” said Portland Bureau of Transportation spokesperson Hannah Schafer, “and I don’t think anyone in the city was. ” On top of that, officials struggled to communicate with stranded commuters about what was going on. Don Hamilton, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said the state agency had to repeatedly stop traffic at the Fremont and Marquam bridges on Wednesday night to apply de-icer and salt, then reopen the bridges. “I don’t know how long those delays were, but those happened several times over the evening,” Hamilton said. But that was news to people who were stuck on the freeway ahead of both those bridges, in two of the city’s worst trouble spots Wednesday night. Drivers reported being stuck in Interstate 5′s Terwilliger Curves for hours, some only getting home after 1 a. m. Hamilton said that other than social media or electronic message boards in specific places along the highway, the agency doesn’t have a way to inform motorists of delays. “It’s effective if you’re near one of those signs,” he said. “But I don’t know if there’s one near the Marquam Bridge. ” State and local agencies also said they relied on forecasts that didn’t predict how severe the storm would turn out to be, even earlier that same morning. Dylan Rivera, a Portland Bureau of Transportation spokesperson, said the National Weather Service sent out a briefing on Monday saying that it expected light snow for the I-5 corridor from Portland to Eugene on Wednesday, but with little impact to roads. By Wednesday morning, he said, the weather agency predicted that there could be snow that night at higher elevations, but likely an inch or less in the metro area. “Given that, we had 20 snowplows fully dressed and ready to go,” he said. “But as we saw a couple inches falling Wednesday afternoon in east Portland, we could see that wasn’t going to be enough. ” Around 2 p. m. , PBOT sent out a tweet saying that the rain was turning to snow, asking people to avoid driving if necessary. By 2:45 p. m. , the city agency closed Germantown Road, a hilly Northwest Portland connecter to Washington County. And around 5 p. m. , PBOT closed Burnside Street, another busy, steep road that’s notoriously treacherous when snow falls. Schafer, the PBOT spokesperson, said the snow was falling too fast for the snowplows to keep up. And as plows hit the streets, they were quickly penned in by traffic and hampered by cars drivers had abandoned on the roads. That hampered road crews progress even through the night. “We can’t clear cars. We have to wait for them to be tagged for parking enforcement, and then towed,” Schafer said. PBOT said it would not issue parking citations to drivers who abandoned their cars in the snow, which can be as much as $270, but that drivers would still be responsible for towing fees. State highways were even more jammed, with a stalled truck blocking the westbound Interstate 84 ramp onto I-5 and a pileup on U. S. 26. Interstate 205 near the airport was snarled, too, Hamilton said. As maintenance crews made repeated trips to refill on fuel, de-icer and loads of sand, Hamilton said they struggled to keep up. “I was up at the maintenance yard two days ago, and we had everything ready to go,” he said. “But when we’re dealing with Mother Nature coming at us as strongly as this, sometimes Mother Nature wins. We did the best with the tools that we have. ” Hamilton said ODOT has also been plagued with a staff shortage, further diminishing their ability to respond quickly. “This is one of the elements we’re dealing with,” he said. “We’re not up to full staff. We were out there as quickly as we could, but our ability to respond is not what we hope it would be. ” Ek, who grew up in Minnesota, said she eventually got out of the bumper-to-bumper traffic once she got past a backup on Interstate 405 at the Northwest St. Helens Road exit. She drove through Northwest Portland and crossed the St. Johns bridge. Suddenly, she was driving through snow and slush but found she had the road to herself. “It wasn’t the safest,” she said, but in terms of traffic, “it was completely clear. ” —Jayati Ramakrishnan;.