Traffic was so bad, someone built hitchhiking snowman on Rt. 78

At least someone was in good spirits during Thursday's storm.

You know the storm we're talking about. The one where 10-mile drives took hours. The one where a few inches of snow crippled the state. The one Gov. Phil Murphy said caught New Jersey off-guard with snow that "fell harder and stronger than any one organization predicted."

The one that was so bad former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called into New Jersey 101.5's Deminski and Doyle to say in his eight years, "I’ve never ridden in anything like this." The former governor — on whose watch aides closed lanes of the George Washington Bridge as political payback against a Fort Lee mayor, who took criticism for telling a questioner "Do you want me to go down there with a mop?" as south Jersey towns flooded during his time campaigning for president in New Hampshire, and who faced criticism early in his first term for continuing with his family vacation at Disney World while New Jersey dug out of a snowstorm — said his 35-minute drive from Piscataway to Morristown eventually took him 5 hours and 40 minutes.

While Ashley Fuzia sat in standstill traffic on Route 78, she spotted something surprising on the side of the road — someone had built a hitchhiking snowman.

"Thank you to (who)ever did this. It definitely made me smile and made the horrific trip home a bit more tolerable," she wrote on Facebook.

Fuzia told New Jersey 101.5 her usual 25-minute ride from Marinsville to Lebanon took a little over an hour — which makes her lucky, compared to some (including the former governor).

"The traffic was pretty bad, especially there," she said. "Two tractor trailers slid off the road in both the right and left lanes so traffic was only able to funnel through the middle."

She said she would have had time to get out of the car for the snapshot when she saw the snowman between Exit 33 and Route 287 going west, if it hadn't been so cold.

On a re-share of Fuzia's picture by another Facebook user, Mike Angelino claimed credit for the snowman, and posted a picture of himself with it. New Jersey 101.5 hasn't yet been able to get a hold of Angelino, but he said in the comments it took him four hrs to get that far on Route 78, then he got stuck for another five hours.

"Wasn't getting me down," he wrote.+