It is too early for a formal ‘after-action’ report that will detail all the things that went wrong for PennDOT in Thursday’s record November snowstorm. The beleaguered plow drivers and other workers, having labored long through the night, are simply too tired.

But as District 8 PennDOT spokesman Greg Penny paged through the “Customer Care” feedback that he said was a litany of polite but withering criticism of the department’s performance – or lack thereof – in Thursday’s gridlock-inducing snowstorm, the search for answers has already begun.

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PennDOT’s Penny offers the following, not as an excuse, rather an explanation:

“It goes back to timing, traffic and trucks,” Penny said.

Timing, because this storm struck in the middle of a work day. Timing again because of the three-hour early dismissal for state works, which Penny said unleashed some 12,000 commuters onto the road around lunchtime, when the storm was at its strongest.

Traffic because all of those commuters heading home early snarled the snow-covered roads, preventing the plethora of plow trucks that PennDOT insists were at the ready, from getting through their routes, which in perfect situation take two hours to cover 40 miles.

And trucks, because unloaded tractor-trailers that teem on central Pennsylvania highways due to the ever-growing number of shipping warehouses centered here were the first to get stuck in the snow, triggering a chain reaction that paralyzed much of the region for at least eight hours Thursday.

“What I saw yesterday started on I-83, with jackknifed or disabled trucks around Reeser’s Summit and Limekiln Road that backed up traffic tremendously,” Penny said. “A lot of people had given up on I-83 and were searching for other routes.”

That cascading effect pushing traffic to alternative routes and backing up all the other arteries feeding I-83 produced the kind of hours-long gridlock that seemed to seize up an entire region.

“The traffic wasn’t moving. We knew people were stuck in traffic for a long time. I know people were out there from 3 to 6 hours,” said Penny, who is still poring over the many customer care complaints flooding the PennDOT website.

“I would say they were letting us know how they felt. I think they were doing it from their phone while they waited in traffic. Some of the criticism is we didn’t treat the roads. But once you get caught in traffic that compounds things. If traffic is not moving, our plow trucks aren’t moving.”

Again, Penny goes back to the timing of this storm.

“When there is very little traffic, we are able to do our jobs very well,” he said, noting PennDOT’s lauded performance in last year’s storm that just happened to strike at night or on the weekends.

“When it is usually a no-win for us is rush hour,” he added.

And with the early dismissal for state employees, Thursday’s rush hour began over lunch, coinciding with the strongest point of the storm. All that traffic pounded down the steadily falling snow into something akin to concrete cover major highways and interstates.

“What compounded the problem was early dismissal,” Penny said. “Some people started leaving around 11:30 to noon. That’s in the neighborhood of 12,000 commuters in the Harrisburg area. What it did is it clogged the roads and made it difficult for our trucks to get around.”

Penny also points a finger at fluctuating forecasts for how much snow Harrisburg would receive. It ended up amounting to a record 8.3 inches for Nov. 15. But few predicted that kind of early-season onslaught.

“I see the criticism coming in, ‘Hey PennDOT, didn’t you see the storm was coming in?’” he said. “Some of the forecasts coming through did not anticipate such a heavy storm. Some of the forecasts we got were not forecasting this large a storm. That affects expectations on how you approach a storm.”

Finally, the region must face the fact that its traffic profile has changed. The surrounding interstates and highways are now truck-heavy due to the warehouse hub this area has become, Penny said.

In a snowstorm, there is no bigger traffic problem than empty tractor-trailers that can so easily become stuck along major arteries, causing a cascading effect that soon snarls traffic around the region.

“It doesn’t take much to disable them,” he said of the unloaded trucks, where no cargo often translates into no-go in a storm.

“I think we may need to work with the trucking industry more on how to control this,” he added. “It is something we are going to have to contend with more. We have increased the truck volume here. There is more traffic out there, and there are more trucks out there.”

Of course, the official after-action report is still to come, offering perhaps more causes and possible solutions for the next time. But Penny isn’t so sure all that much would be different, given the same circumstance.

“Once the guys get some rest, we will take a look at this more in depth,” Penny promised. “But if you talk to the crews, they will say there wasn’t much more they could do. They worked as hard as they could, and they worked until the roads were clear.”

This was simply a perfect storm for producing gridlock.