Southeast Idaho seeing lots of snow; poor road conditions

All areas in Idaho are getting hit pretty big with snowfall on Christmas Sunday.

In Pocatello, road conditions were slick. People were stuck in the middle of intersections because of large pileups. I-15 was also poor travel conditions. It was basically one lane of travel, with the rest of the interstate covered in snow. The on and off ramps were completely covered in snow, with hardly any tracks on them to see the road. Pocatello was seeing ten inches in most areas early Sunday evening. Snow is still continuing in the area.

And other southeastern areas, like Preston, were reporting large amounts of snowfall. Preston had between nine and ten inches by early Sunday afternoon. Cars were completely covered, visibility was poor and church services around the Preston area were canceled for the day.

The Preston area hasn’t seen a storm dump that much snow so quickly in a few years, so residents were a little surprised. But because of a blizzard warning in effect for much of southeastern Idaho, people say they weren’t traveling if they didn’t have to. As of around 7:30 p.m. Sunday night, most of the Preston area had seen between 11 and 12 inches.

“We walked over to the neighbors and then we came back for our car to drive it over to haul Christmas presents,” said Samantha Olsen. “The snow covered the inside parts of the tires and it is deep and it is a thick snow. We will not drive out in it and I hope that those have to are careful because we’ve heard of a lot of slide-offs. It’s deep and drifted in a lot of areas.”

Idaho State Police and local law enforcement are asking the public to stay home and only travel if it’s an emergency.