bluebarry1964b
Homestead, Florida
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It looks like my wife and I will be heading from Roswell,NM to Fresno,CA for her next assignment. Should I be concerned with winter driving through the mountain areas on Interstate 40 through Flagstaff, AZ or Hwy 58 through Tehachapi, CA? Any information that you can give me would be a great help. Thanks.
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dupreet
High Point, NC
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Done that run a few times back in the 1980's. With the decent weather forecasting we have, you should be fine. Once in April, we woke up in NM to 8" of overnight snow! We got the truck and 24' TT out of the campground and down to a truckstop. I-40 was a mess, but there was another big storm coming. We risked the nasty roads to get down from the high desert - I remember counting over 100 semis jack-knifed on the roads.
As long as you have an open window of weather, you'll be fine.
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wolfe10
Texas
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Indeed, you will want to check weather/road conditions before taking that route.
Mapquest shows it is only 57 miles further to drop down to I 10 and take the southern route. Depends on your timing
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submustang
Southern Oregon
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I made that trip in February a couple years ago. Flagstaff is high enough to get a fair amount of snow and there were a few slick spots on 40 when I went through. If you watch the weather reports and time it right, you should be able to avoid anything there. There was also a little ice on Tehachapi pass, but we had just had a storm that dropped snow along much of hiway 101 from Willits to Cresent City. Again monitor the weather closely and you should be ok.
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Fulltimers
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Depends on when you are going. If you go now, there is no problem. I have seen both closed in past winters.
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WyoTraveler
Powell, WY
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Real simple. Once in AZ dial 511 on your cell and get up to date weather info. AZ is one that is on the 511 system.
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CarlGeo
Central San Joaquin Valley, CA
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I-40 thru Flagstaff elevation is approx. 7000 ft and high enough to have snow during and immediately after a storm passes thru. Ice will be present all winter long where there is standing water on roadways. BEWARE of Black Ice in this area.
Tehachapi pass is about 4000 ft elevation and will only see snow during storms. Winter storms are very accurately predicted by the weather service, and typically there will only be two or three storms all winter of significance. You should encounter very limited, if any ice over this pass. I live in this area and weather is typically not a problem for Hwy 58 travel.
Flagstaff is where you will most likely have problems, but Tehachapi should not be a problem if you monitor the weather service forecasts. If a storm is passing thru, just park for a day and wait it out.
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bluebarry1964b
Homestead, Florida
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Fulltimers wrote:Depends on when you are going. If you go now, there is no problem. I have seen both closed in past winters.
Oops, my bad.....I should have stated that. We'll be leaving Roswell on about January 21st.
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bluebarry1964b
Homestead, Florida
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wolfe10 wrote:Indeed, you will want to check weather/road conditions before taking that route.
Mapquest shows it is only 57 miles further to drop down to I 10 and take the southern route. Depends on your timing
I sincerely appreciate the fact that you took the time to Mapquest this; that was very nice of you, really. I'm still thinking about the I 10....it's further south, weather will be warmer, etc. The only reason I'm looking at the I 40...and maybe this is a dumb reason considering the weather that we may run into...is simply that there's more on the I 40 route that we'd like to see. We have about 9 days to get to Fresno, so as long as we didn't run into any multi-day snowstorms, we shouldn't have any trouble getting to Fresno on-time.
With that said, I really would like to enjoy the trip, and I'm not going to do that if I'm wrestling with icy roads or sitting at a truck stop waiting out the weather. I'll have to give this more thought.
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bluebarry1964b
Homestead, Florida
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WyoTraveler wrote:Real simple. Once in AZ dial 511 on your cell and get up to date weather info. AZ is one that is on the 511 system.
That's excellent advice. I'll make a note of that phone number. It would make it a lot easier to re-route if we knew enough time ahead as to what the conditions were like in Flagstaff. Thanks.
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