Hailstorm blamed for spate of accidents on I-5

The good news: Today is supposed to be nice.

The sun even is expected to make a cameo appearance by the afternoon.

The bad news: rainy and dank, cold, cloudy, oh-my-it-looks-like-winter weather should be back by Saturday.

Worse, it’s not expected to go away for two weeks, and the long-range forecast is for a wetter-than-normal fall and an early winter.

“Winterlike systems have started a little early,” said Dennis D’Amico, a National Weather Service meteor­ologist. “There’s no stretch of days that we’re looking at for the next two weeks where there’s a defined dry period. The long-term outlook is for above-normal precipitation.”

That could make for tough commutes.

Traffic was clogged for hours on southbound I-5 after an isolated hailstorm pelted Everett on Thursday.

Pea-size hail started falling about 2 p.m., causing at least eight separate collisions, said trooper Kirk Rudeen, a spokesman for the Washington State Patrol. The accidents occurred on the stretch between 112th Street SW and 128th Street SW.

Semi-trucks were involved in four of the crashes. In one, three big rigs and a car collided. No one reported being seriously injured, Rudeen said.

All lanes of the freeway were blocked for at least an hour while tow trucks cleared the tangle off the freeway. Traffic was backed up for miles into north Everett throughout the afternoon.

“People weren’t giving themselves enough room and they were going too fast for the conditions,” Rudeen said. “Pretty much all of them were rear-end fender benders. People need to slow down.”

Hailstorms are normal in the fall and spring, said Carl Cerniglia, another National Weather Service meteorologist. Hail forms when raindrops are lofted to cool altitudes, where they freeze. They also have to be close enough to the ground so that they don’t melt by the time they hit.

At higher elevations, it was snow that was falling, including as much as 12 inches on the slopes at the Stevens Pass Ski resort, said Chris Rudolph, a spokesman for the ski area.

In Stevens Pass itself, about four inches of snow fell, D’Amico said.

The snow likely will melt before there is a significant buildup on the slopes, but the wet and cold beginning to fall bodes well for skiing by Thanksgiving, D’Amico said.