Tumbleweed takeover! Cars trapped, highway near Richland closed 10 hours
Thousands of blowing tumbleweeds trapped cars driving on Highway 240 northwest of Richland on New Year’s Eve.
The tumbleweeds were so deep and so thick that the Washington state Department of Transportation had to bring out plow trucks to clear the roadway, according to the Washington State Patrol.
The highway was closed for about 10 hours from Tuesday evening through about 4:30 a.m. New Year’s Day.
WSP Trooper Chris Thorson posted on Twitter at about 8:30 p.m. that several cars had become trapped in tumbleweeds.
One driver called the state patrol to report that she had abandoned her car in a ditch and gotten a ride with another driver, but the tumbleweeds were so deep that the state patrol had not been able to find her car at 2:30 a.m.
Plow trucks were clearing piles of tumbleweeds that stretched for 20 to 30 feet, Thorson said.
“No collisions. No injuries,” Thorson posted about 2:30 a.m. “The plow truck drivers also did a great job of working around abandoned vehicles without hitting them, which was a daunting task as they were very hard to see in the thick brush.”
After daylight, Department of Transportation workers found and unburied a car at the side of the highway, which had been hidden from sight after plowing topped the roof of the car with several feet of tumbleweeds. No one was in it.
The road closure at its peak was about 20 miles long. Lanes in both direction on Highway 240 were closed from Highway 225 about 10 miles northwest of Richland to Highway 24.
The National Weather Station reported wind gusts coming from the west of 30 to 40 mph throughout most of the night on Highway 240 northwest of Richland.
To the west of the closed section of Highway 240 is the open land of the Hanford Reach National Monument and to the east is the production portion of the Hanford nuclear reservation.
Hanford workers were alerted through the night to the road closure, with the limited number of workers on duty New Year’s Eve and the early morning of New Year’s Day advised to use alternate routes to Hanford.
This story was originally published January 1, 2020 at 12:46 PM.