Grapevine reopens after snow, accidents snarl traffic on Interstate 5

The Grapevine section of Interstate 5 reopened Monday after being shut down overnight Sunday due to inclement weather.

Motorists were warned in a tweet from Caltrans Monday afternoon that snow, ice and wet roads could still make driving the stretch treacherous.

On Sunday evening, the California Highway Patrol's Fort Tejon office announced at 6:15 p.m. the Grapevine was closed "due to multiple collisions." Northbound lanes were closed at Parker Road in Castaic, while southbound I-5 was shut at Grapevine Road south of Bakersfield.

The mountainous route connects Ventura and Los Angeles counties to the Central Valley.

Both northbound and southbound lanes of the thoroughfare reopened just after 11 a.m. Monday. Earlier in the day only southbound lanes had been cleared and the CHP was escorting vehicles. 

The damage and traffic jam, however, was in full effect on Sunday. 

On Sunday night, as the closure stretched on for hours, reports of stalled vehicles and accidents clogged the CHP's incident log. Big rigs on I-5 were reported stuck in ice and snow. Motorists said they were running out of gas as hundreds remained trapped in the closed section, CHP logs showed. Snow and ice brought dicey conditions to other mountain roads at high elevations. One collision west of Frazier Park, for example, apparently involved a Kern County snow plow as vehicles slid into each other.

Shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday, a Santa Paula area beekeeper tweeted a photo from the Grapevine showing a truck hauling bee hives on the snowy roadway.

"My husband and son are both stuck in separate trucks hauling our bees," Wendi Dowling-Mitchell of Blue Ridge Honey wrote.

In Ventura County, Highway 33 above Ojai was closed shortly before 7 p.m. from the Wheeler Gorge campground to Highway 166 due to snow and ice, according to the CHP. It remained closed Monday. 

Earlier Sunday evening, multiple spinouts on northbound I-5 had brought traffic to a crawl, the CHP reported. Before 3 p.m., the agency had started pacing traffic at 25 mph in some stretches.

Snow has closed I-5 over the Grapevine several times this season as winter storms continue to bring rain and snow to Southern California.