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Four times if you travel the route even weekly is... about 7% of your trips. If you just count possible winter driving and conservatively use Sept. through May you're at 10%, if you're travels get interrupted 4 more times you'll be at 20% for the season. I'm sure that is hard on your schedule, but hardly alarming to me. I used to travel from Casper to Evanston three months every winter. I didn't like it, felt I was playing a game of odds and found something else.
It's not like we have people or abandoned cars lining I-80 all winter. We all do get around the state in the winter.
You can play games with a statistical analysis to create numbers which play into your perspective on calling this a "rare" occurence. Unfortunately, you play a fool's errand by assuming x number of winter trips in an entire year, which is not the case at all. Winter travel is but a portion of a year all the years I've been driving in the Rocky Mountain West ... since 1964.
But this season has been a very mild one, and that's 4 trips so far this year where the travels were difficult to this extent. That's Four trips in Jan 2013 to present, which isn't 8 weeks as I took off the first week of January due to illness. So that's half of the weekly trips I took around the area, not 7% of my trips, but 50% of my wintertime trips so far this year. What has minimized the impact upon my business travels is that I've been able to be flexible about my destinations and have chosen them each week with an eye towards the most likely favorable weather for my trips. Having a self-contained RV has been a huge advantage for me because I can continue work from my mobile office and have lodging/meals at my convenience ... as opposed to years past where I traveled in a car and was dependent upon stopping in towns where I could get a motel room (more than once, I've pulled into Rock Springs, Rawlins, or Laramie and there wasn't a room to be had or a place to park at a truck stop). I've had more than several times where I pushed on eastward from Rawlins ... where a room wasn't to be had ... in a storm so severe that it took me 4 hours to reach Laramie, where I then found out again that there wasn't a motel room to be had in town; wound up in the WalMart parking lot, slept in my car. One time, I was almost buried in a drift there and the plow crew almost hit my car, not realizing that I was parked there ... learned my lesson from that, I've since chosen to park by obstacles that the plow trucks don't come so close to.
As well, I've had some winters here in the last 15 years where it wasn't uncommon to see the truckers stacked up at the Antelope, TA, or Sapp Bros, for several days. We had friends down from Canada a few years ago for Thanksgiving who made it to the TA and were stuck there for 4 days before the roads were opened again. 15 miles short of their destination, they had no choice but to sit it out and head for home when the roads opened; we missed them and we couldn't get to them, either because we were totally snowed in at our ranch. That's early in the winter season, too, for such a violent prolonged storm front.
No, we don't have "people or abandoned cars lining I-80 all winter". But it's not uncommon for folk to prudently stop at the first town opportunity when conditions warrant so that they are not out on the road for the duration of a storm situation. Nevertheless, I travel these roads frequently enough after the storms to see the evidence of many off-road excursions by folk who do manage to lose control of their vehicles and get stuck. Some get pulled out by good samaratans, some get pulled out by first responders, some get pulled out by commercial tow services. My point remains that I do see a lot of vehicles throughout the winter months that are stuck, or vehicles that have been abandoned until the owners can return with a vehicle that can pull theirs back onto the roadway. If, as I saw on that last trip back from Cody, I can count over 25 vehicles off the road in nothing more than the stretch from the Orion rest stop to Wheatland, that's a lot of vehicles that didn't successfully transit the area in the space of the storm front arrival at around 5AM until I passed through in the early afternoon.
As you admit, however, " .... felt I was playing a game of odds and found something else" as your justification to find ".... something else" rather than doing the 3 winter months of travel from Casper to Evanston. Obviously, the circumstances presented where you determined that it either wasn't a prudent thing to do or it wasn't worth the ongoing risks that you were taking to make those trips ... so the adverse situations you were dealing with were far from "rare" ... or they wouldn't have been an issue.
Dude. Did you read my post or did you just pick out a word or two and your brain screamed "Wrong. She's wrong! I must tell her!" lol
Dude, or Lady or whatever you characterize yourself as ... I not only read your post, I quoted it for my response.
Your assertion that it's a "rare" occurrence for adverse winter driving conditions to present along I-80 each year is patently and demonstrably false. To tell a newbie moving to this area that it's "rare" is totally misleading.
Further, your post indicated that the winter driving circumstances were adverse enough ... even for you, a tough old experienced wintertime Wyoming driver ... to prompt you to find a different job so that you didn't have to deal with them; that's hardly the stuff of a "rare" occurrence.
My concern is that the OP have accurate information, which apparently you choose not to provide.
OP, you might want to google "wyoming winter driving" or similar posts on YouTube to see what I'm talking about. It's no piece of cake; there's lots of video's of folks driving along these stretches of roadway in blizzard conditions and the subsequent days of wind-blown covered roads after the snowstorms stop but the obscuration, icy roads, and low visibility persist for days, along with the difficult driving situation from the semi's still passing you on the roads ....
If everybody stopped at the first sign of snow, I could see where there would be a real problem, but the fact of the matter is that I-80 is THE major truck route from East to West and as such, thousands of vehicles a day make that trip. In late March, like I said, it's hit and miss and you might have to spend one night in a motel until the roads open, or, you might sail right through without a hitch. If there is heavy snow on the ground and it's powder, trucks passing can be a real problem, but late March, the snows are usually pretty wet and you stand more of a chance of slush than you do powdered white outs.
Watch the weather reports, get the Notify 511 txt messages so you have "instant" reports, and allow yourself some time.
Here's a very typical AM I-80 road report for this time of the year, from WYDOT. They mention two major accidents on Western I-80 this AM, with likely travel delays in the area on I-80. Note that this is the result of a quick passing storm front which didn't drop much snow accumulation through the region; the storm fronts dropped much more snow in the SLC and DEN areas than along the I-80 corridor.
At 5 AM this morning, here at the ranch 9 miles south of I-80, we've got less than an inch of new snowfall. Yet the stretch of I-80 nearby is listed as having "black ice" per WYDOT, and the road cameras at the POE show rather nasty conditions.
Again, my point is that it doesn't take much in the way of adverse weather conditions to create hazardous driving conditions along this entire route of I-80 from NE to UT.
I copy the following from the WYDOT I-80 road report this AM:
"Conditions
Advisories
Last Report Time
Cameras
Sensors
Evanston
Between the Utah State Line and Evanston
Slick with Snowfall
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Evanston and Exit 18, US 189
Slick with Snowfall
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Exit 18, US 189 and Exit 30, Bigelow Rd
Slick with Snowfall
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Lyman
Between Exit 30, Bigelow Rd and Exit 39, WY 412/414
Slick with Snowfall, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Exit 39, WY 412/414 and Exit 53, Church Butte Rd
Slick with Snowfall, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Granger
Between Exit 53, Church Butte Rd and Exit 66, Granger Jct
Slick with Snowfall, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Exit 66, Granger Jct and Exit 83, La Barge Rd
Slick with Snowfall
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Rock Springs
Between Exit 83, La Barge Rd and Rock Springs
Slick with Snowfall, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Rock Springs and Point of Rocks
Slick with Snowfall, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Patrick Draw
Between Point of Rocks and Exit 142, Bitter Creek
Slick, Drifted Snow with Snowfall, Strong Winds, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Exit 142, Bitter Creek and Exit 158, Tipton Rd
Slick, Drifted Snow with Snowfall, Strong Winds, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Wamsutter
Between Exit 158, Tipton Rd and Wamsutter
Slick, Drifted Snow with Snowfall, Strong Winds, Blowing Snow
Black Ice
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Wamsutter and Exit 187, Creston Jct
Slick, Drifted Snow with Snowfall, Strong Winds, Blowing Snow
Between Exit 323, Happy Jack Rd and Exit 335, Buford
Slick, Drifted Snow with Snowfall, Strong Winds, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Cheyenne
Between Exit 335, Buford and Exit 348, Otto Rd
Slick, Drifted Snow with Snowfall, Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Exit 348, Otto Rd and Cheyenne
Slick with Blowing Snow
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Cheyenne and Exit 377, WY 217
Slick with Snowfall
Black Ice
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Pine Bluffs
Between Exit 377, WY 217 and Pine Bluffs
Slick with Snowfall
None
Feb 24, 2013 07:45 am
Between Pine Bluffs and the Nebraska State Line
Slick with Snowfall
None"
How long will these adverse driving conditions last today? Probably most of the day until the sun comes out to melt off the surfaces. We're seeing some sunshine poking through now at 8 AM, so it could be clearing in just a few hours, but the satellite and radar NOAA images don't show such clearing along much of the route yet. There's not enough stuff on the road to benefit from snow plowing ....
And with that massive list, the Wyoming Highway Patrol have issued only ONE advisory for I-80.
I 80
Cheyenne
Between Cheyenne and Exit 377, WY 217
Black Ice
Feb 24, 2013 08:55 am
The op isn't traveling today, but the end of March. Conditions are a lot different then and we don't normally have powder blowing around. Hard snows are pretty slim (don't want to say rare because I have no positive definition of "rare") at that time and if there is one, it's usually a front that rolls through. The ground is starting to thaw, the roads are starting to warm up and those snows are usually slush problems, not blowing snow problems.
It's Wyoming, you have to expect he unexpected, but painting it as doom and gloom at every turn, is not accurate either.
The Wyoming Highway Patrol is very afraid of their own shadow when it comes to highway conditions and when they shut them down. Right now, the highway by me is CLOSED due to Winter Conditions. I went out and measured, we got exactly an inch and a half of snow. There is no wind. Of course, I don't know what it is to the West of me, but if I can't drive in 1.5 inches of snow, I need to move to Florida and huddle in the corner.
The Wyoming Highway Patrol shuts down roads and issues advisorys way before they are a major problem. But they are advisories. Right now, if I was traveling I-80, I would be more tentative while transiting through Cheyenne, but I certainly wouldn't be pulling over and getting a motel room until the highway is absolutely perfect, because in Wyoming, that will never happen.
Last edited by ElkHunter; 02-24-2013 at 09:18 AM..
EH ... there were two major accidents at the I-80 report I posted, along with black ice in the Wamsutter area in addition to the black ice in the Eastern end of I-80.
While I'm not trying to point up doom and gloom, I'm also enough of a realist to know that this is a very mild frontal passage through the area at this time, with relatively warm conditions for this storm ... and not particularly dissimilar to what typically presents in another month from now. Nor did I suggest that the conditions present were cause to get a motel room, but suggested it might be prudent to wait a few hours for conditions to improve with the sunshine coming out. As I've been watching the NWS screens, that's exactly what's been happening, starting in the Western areas of WY along I-80. Even though we've had some lowered ceilings and more flurries here in SE WY since I posted earlier, the road conditions appear to be improving.
As you've posted, it's a "crap shoot" for road conditions at this time of the year. My point is that it doesn't take a major snow storm of biblical proportions to create adverse driving/black ice conditions with major accidents on the highway as a result. Given that the two I-80 accidents WYDOT is reporting this AM involved professional drivers, it's telling how serious the adverse conditions can be for driving now.
Those of us who deal with these conditions on an ongoing basis with appropriately equipped vehicles and prudent driving skills can manage it ... but those folks passing through frequently underestimate the driving challenges. Some do so with adverse results.
I'll agree that the WYHP has gotten a lot lower threshold of closing roads or issuing advisories about winter travel than in prior years. With an eye toward risk and expense management, they are issuing warnings and closures at less adverse conditions.
And yet, I've seen it both ways ... when there were no advisories and there were locally some treacherous spots on the highway .... saw this on Friday heading over the pass to Laramie in the AM when the variable posted speed zones were back to 75 mph. Passing through the Veedauwoo area, there were localized spots of blowing snow across I-80 where the road was iced up for a couple hundred yards. I watched several semi's take a sudden excursion across a lane as they hit this stuff; if you had been driving next to them at the time, it could have had an encounter of a less than pleasant nature. My AWD car handled and tracked well through this stuff, but it wasn't a place to be running cruise control which was otherwise OK for the balance of the trip. It also brought home the point that it wasn't advisable to be alongside another vehicle when transiting those slick areas; it pays to be attentive to the road surfaces that you can see ahead as well as the activity of the vehicles in front of you as a tip-off that there's something going on up ahead which deserves your attention and perhaps, pro-active driving management (slow down? change into a better lane which is more clear road surface?). IMO, many drivers don't develop or utilize these types of driving skills because they don't need them "back home" ....
PS: Last Friday, while at the shop where I was doing a training session ... they have a WYHP towing contract. They were called upon to do two tows while I was there, one about noon, and another about an hour later. I know the first one was about 10 miles out of town, which would have placed the roll-over Hyundai SUV (IIRC) about a mile up the canyon from the flats on the East side of Laramie. When I went through that area a few hours earlier, there were spots of ice in the shadowe'd area of the steep canyon walls there. This was long past the time of the storm front passage, but the winds in the area continued to blow snow across the road, causing localized icing conditions (snow melt/refreeze). With no WYDOT warnings, clear skies, clear roads, and a posted 65 mph zone there, it's still necessary to be prepared and observant for less than good conditions in those curves and the hill. Apparently, two drivers that day didn't pay attention that day ... and this was in what I'd call excellent winter driving conditions for the area.
I'll mention, too ... that my Wyoming winter road observations aren't those of simply a local traveler through the area, but someone who calls upon all the automotive and truck repair shops throughout the region as my business. So I'm getting to see the vehicles that come in on a hook or have been damaged in winter time driving incidents and off-road excursions. My data base posted here isn't just my personal observations of how the driving day went, but a compilation of the actual results of folk driving these highways. FWIW, there's a lot of winter accidents in which there are no police reports because they are typically one-vehicle incidents and the owners get the cars towed or driven to a shop without a police/patrol/deputy involved; absent an injury requiring first responders, there's simply not enough manpower in the police dept's to reach every accident scene. Many folk can call a local tow service, or local folk can call upon the resources of friends with a 4x4 with a winch or tow rope, or simply even a number of strong friends to get their vehicles back onto the road. I've personally "rescued" a number of off-road excursions by neighbors down around my area with my JD4020, or a couple of times with my Subie OBW. With no injuries and no serious damage to their vehicles, it wasn't a big deal to get them back out on the road and going again .... and not a reportable/reported accident. Mobile communications these days are a huge safety boon to the traveling public when things don't go as they should in your travels.
Ah, in the middle of lambing ... so get interrupted with pressing issues in the barn.
But to put further meaning into my last paragraph above ...
here's what's going on that separates my observations from so many other posts on travels in Wyoming.
Let's take a relatively typical winter day of mildly adverse winter driving conditions. The old timers here who traveled a route, let's say I-80 ... in a properly equipped vehicle with good driving skills travel from Cheyenne through Laramie on their way to points West. They see the signs of vehicle tracks off-road, but no vehicles there now, no first responders, and have a reasonably mellow trip. All in stride, no incidents, no unusual excitement, not even an accident scene in progress. They can reasonably report their observations that it was a typical winter driving day, no drama, no excitement, perhaps there was a slick spot or two to watch out for in the areas they know from experience have lots of shade through the winter and are likley bends in the road where they need to be alert for slick spots. And so forth, even up to storming conditions where traffic appears to be moving reasonably well and nobody is getting into trouble. Well and good ....
but here's the difference in our perspective. When I get to Cheyenne, I'm calling upon the automotive repair shops ... clients and cold calls. Then I get into my vehicle and travel to Laramie, where I call upon the automotive and truck repair shops. So my destination many times is the nexus where those who didn't complete their travels and transit through the area leave their vehicles. And when I'm done in Laramie, then I'm off to Rawlins, where I repeat the cold calls and client calls. Again, I get to see the vehicles that didn't make their travels through the area without incident. And when I'm done in Rawlins, it's off to the truck stops and little towns and repair shops enroute to Rock Springs. Where I repeat the process of seeing the business activity of all the shops, and that includes the fleet shops, too.
So the result of my few days traveling along the I-80 corridor presents an entirely different view of what took place on the road through the storms and subsequent adverse conditions that may have presented for days afterwards. I get to see the results of those who didn't complete their travels safely and without incident.
The folk who drove the road in the same time frame without incident and completed their travels don't get to see those wrecks or damaged vehicles. I do.
My sales territory includes WY, NE, SD, and northern CO. I travel the interstates, the main state roads, and many of the backwater county roads into little towns because there's automotive and truck repair shops in all those places. Additionally, I call upon the school districts, vo-techs, community colleges, and fleet repair shops because I have products for them, too. So I'm out on the roads as a business traveler, and I'm traveling a wider variety of them then somebody who has a set route along I-80 or I-90 or I-25, or any of the main state highways. Plus I get to travel the region via my airplane, and I get to stop ... well, you guessed it ... at those same automotive shops that I call upon when I travel in my road vehicles. Again, I get to see what didn't successfully complete travels across the region, and there's times where the highways are messed up yet air travel is very effective for me. And I get to hear the stories of the tow truck drivers at many shops, too.
As I mentioned in past threads on this forum, I have neighbors who run a business specializing in on-call recovery of goods from rail cars or trucks on the roads here. They do a bang-up (pun intended) business every year because they get handsome fees for the service plus get a lot of damaged case/cartons goods of salvage merchandise and foodstuffs to sell. The priority at an accident/incident scene is to clear the road and get traffic moving again, so tidy preservation of assets/goods isn't a concern of the first responders. So again, I get to see how busy they are and how many days they get called out to provide service. It's their main livlihood which supports their farming habit.
My bet is that very few of the folks on this forum even know where the wrecks go to in their area. It's not just to a wrecking yard immediately, most serious accident vehicles are towed to an impound yard where the vehicle is secured for the purposes of follow-up accident investigation and insurance/adjusters reports. If you don't have cause to go to those facilities, most of you don't even know or see what wrecked vehicles come in off the roads. And I get to see those vehicles as well as the ones that are merely damaged yet still driveable to a repair shop.
Let me further expand the parameters of my observations here ... I don't get to see every accident result in every area I travel; ie, I can only be in one place at a time. So when I get into a Laramie, or Rawlins, or Rock Springs and see a bunch of accident vehicles on any given day, I'm not seeing what happened in Casper or Cody or Buffalo or Lander or Jackson on that day, which may have had their share of incidents ... or not, as the case may be depending upon the traffic and road conditions. Nor am I seeing all the results of a storm passage in the weeks prior to my visit, which may already have been through a shop or are awaiting a better time frame to get fixed. So, I recognize that my travels yield only a representative sampling of what's going on out on the roads and not an absolute total, but what presents is a snapshot of what is happening out on the roads. If I'm seeing only a sampling, then it's reasonable to infer that there are more incidents than I'm seeing the results of in my travels around the state.
got thru finals week in Laramie once the end of May and had to sopend two more days in town.... there were semis lining alot of the streets off ot intersate exits. but that was one wet heavy spring storm
I'll not quote your long post, but I will say, once again, as the op has said, they are traveling at the end of March. What happened last month, or last week, or early this morning, doesn't have a lot to do with it. You continue to post doom and gloom as if you don't want anybody traveling in our state, or maybe every driver has absolutely no experience with driving and must be afraid of every cloud. It's simply not that way and if the op logs on to 511 notify, they'll learn what's going on with I-80 and travel when they get ready to travel. Looking at weather now is absolutely NO HELP.
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