by Vikki Hopes and Tyler Olsen, Abbotsford News
Abbotsford Police dealt with 18 collisions in 24 hours following the snowfall in the Fraser Valley over the weekend.
Const. Ian MacDonald said the crashes, almost all single-vehicle, took place starting 8 a.m. Sunday.
He said about half occurred on Highway 1 and involved vehicles going off the road, mainly travelling eastbound, where conditions worsened towards Chilliwack.
MacDonald said most of the crashes in town took place on the Blueridge Drive and Townline Road hills.
"Traction was a problem on both of those hills … At times, we had cars ending up perpendicular to traffic," he said.
MacDonald said there were no serious injuries in any of the collisions.
The first winter storm of the year began overnight on Saturday, hitting the Fraser Valley hardest from Aldergrove and to the east with snow, freezing rain and strong winds.
Several trees fell onto power lines, knocking out power to thousands of customers in Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission and Langley.
BC Hydro reported more than two dozen distinct outages, many attributed simply to "adverse weather." In most instances, power was quickly restored.
The largest outage, attributed to a "wind storm," knocked out power to more than 3,000 customers for three hours Sunday night.
A winter weather warning issued for the entire Fraser Valley on Saturday turned into a rainfall warning for Abbotsford by late Monday morning.
Environment Canada warned that the ground was nearly saturated and had little ability to absorb further rainfall.