By 2 p.m., traffic was backed up around 3 miles, Earl said. “Around 4:30, traffic backups greatly increased. The overwhelming majority of the traffic was trucks, and in what seemed a greater than average amount of trucks.”

'Start all over again'

Geller traced the northbound I-81 “delays and stoppages” to about 9:30 a.m. “near the 29-mile marker in Washington County,” she said. “There’s an incline within that stretch of interstate for northbound traffic, and the tractor-trailers began experiencing issues with being able to make it up the incline as the weather and road conditions rapidly worsened.”

As those vehicles became stuck, lanes became blocked and it “sparked a chain reaction of stop-and-go traffic stretching back to at least the 17-mile marker,” Geller said. “There was at least one jackknifed tractor-trailer, but that was a disabled vehicle as there was no damage to the vehicle and was not the result of a traffic crash.”

Geller maintains that the issues “were not the result of traffic crashes in the northbound lanes of I-81. Deteriorating road conditions and too much traffic on the interstate led to the extended stoppages,” she said.