I-80 REOPENS: Travelers Were Stuck Overnight

I'm sure they got stuck. I hope they did not have to sleep in their car.

Monday Morning, I received a text from a gentleman who lives in Cheyenne but had traveled with his wife to Utah over the weekend. They were listening to my morning radio talk show on her phone app. Their plan was to push through on I-80 and hope that the interstate would be open by the time they got to Rock Springs.

He sent me a photo of the road conditions. It was white, wet, and slick-looking.

"You should start looking for a hotel," I texted back.

It was a mid-March blizzard. More than 30 inches of snow fell in the Snow Range region. Power was out for much of Carbon County.

A literal blizzard had pushed into the central southern part of Wyoming, shutting down several major arteries across the Cowboy State, including most of I-80 from Laramie to Rock Springs. What wasn't closed was sketchy driving.

Nobody was complaining about the wet. This past winter was dry, so we needed this storm.

Below is the picture she sent me as they made it into Wyoming, driving toward Rock Springs. This part of the interstate remained open. The big storm was ahead of them.

Tuesday morning I arrived at work at my usual stupid early time. 1:30 am. This gives me time to research my morning radio show and write some articles. My thoughts went to her text, and I looked up those road conditions again. Again, I hoped that they were able to find a room.

I-80 between Rock Springs and Rawlins was still closed. The rest of it was open but marked as a slow and sketchy drive. Overnight news reports wrote of many stranded drivers. Temperatures had dropped down into the low twenties.

As of 5:30 am the interstate reopened. WYDOT was sure to be out there doing all they could to get traffic moving again. The longer these folks were out there, the more dangerous the situation would become.

UPDATE: At 6:20 this morning I got this text from Scott:

Morning Glenn - spent the night in Rock Springs at a motel - no problem getting one and they didn’t gouge us. Looking forward to the show this morning - we’ll be on the road in a few minutes