WASHINGTON — The hardest thing to explain to WTOP listeners Monday morning was how a crash closing outbound Canal Road could cause such multidirectional delays. But that’s how it works.

There’s always cause and effect. A little before 7 a.m. Monday, a car traveling inbound on Canal Road struck a pole, which fell across the outbound lanes.

So the delays began to ripple back to MacArthur Boulevard and the Clara Barton Parkway, from the Whitehurst Freeway and back to K Street in Northwest. There was gridlock in Rosslyn, Arlington, on the Key Bridge and even the southbound George Washington Parkway from the CIA.

It’s hard to grasp the implications of one, two-hour road closure. But the effects of this mishap continued until almost 10 a.m.

Bottom line, things aren’t always as they seem, and together, we can figure out the headaches on the 8s.