CalTrans, CHP and truckers.....

Oh the frustrations.... I just got a call from my trucker friend. He's heading west out of Reno, NV and wanted to know what the road conditions are coming down Donner Pass. So I click on my usual bookmarks, Caltrans Road Conditions and CHP Traffic Incidents to check what the chain controls are. The Caltrans page says that Westbound I80 is closed to trucks due to snow, but the CHP page says absolutely nothing about closing the road, nor does it give chain requirements on either page! No chain controls listed for any vehicles? But they've closed the road? Weird. So I tell my trucker friend what the pages say.... And then I go look at the Caltrans Live Traffic Cameras page and click through a few of the cameras. I tell him what I'm seeing, Floriston looks good, the Truckee Scales looks ok, Kingvale looks like a mess, the Whitmore Grade isn't much better, but the rest of the way down just looks wet. He's got the Caltrans radio on and they're just telling him to tune to station such and such and they're giving NO information at all!

Why the heck aren't Caltrans and CHP talking to each other? lol... Sometimes I am glad that I'm not driving a rig anymore!

Here's a screenshot of the lovely snowy view from the Whitmore Grade camera:


See the big rig on one shoulder? And the SUV on the opposite shoulder? According to the CHP website, they had a bit of a fender bender between them. Later shots from the camera show the SUV pulling away and the CHP site says they're waiting for the big rig tow to come help the trucker get out of the snow bank at the side of the road... Frustrations for the trucker? You bet... I'm glad I'm not up there.