Marianne Nelson left her Rawlins home at 5:15 a.m. Monday for what should have been a 10-minute drive to her job at the Wyoming State Penitentiary. By 11 a.m. she had been stuck on Interstate 80 for nearly six hours.
“I’ve got three semitrucks parked in front of me,” Nelson told Cowboy State Daily. “I guess there’s a tow truck somewhere, but he’s stuck, too. I can’t see anything, and I only have a quarter of a tank of gas.”
Nelson’s morning was the lived experience of what the Wyoming Department of Transportation map showed at the same hour: more than 200 miles of I-80 closed across southern Wyoming, from Rock Springs east to Cheyenne. By late Monday evening WYDOT estimated reopening between 6 and 8 a.m. MDT Tuesday for the Rawlins-to-Laramie segment, with Rawlins-to-Rock Springs targeted for late Monday night through midnight Tuesday.
The First Blizzard Warning in Over Two Years
The National Weather Service office in Cheyenne upgraded its Winter Storm Warning for the Arlington area to a Blizzard Warning Monday morning, citing whiteout conditions. According to Wyoming News Now, it was the first Blizzard Warning issued anywhere in Wyoming in over two years.
Blizzard Warning criteria are strict: sustained winds above 35 mph, visibility below a quarter mile, for at least three consecutive hours. The NWS Cheyenne bulletin was unambiguous: “Travel should be restricted to emergencies only. If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle.”
WYDOT was clearing four-foot drifts by noon. Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day reported as much as 30 inches of snow in the Snowy Range, with 10 inches in some places directly along the interstate.
What WYDOT Said
WYDOT Deputy Public Affairs Officer Jordan Young told Wyoming News Now the storm overwhelmed the agency: “So our crews in Rawlins are reporting a lot of snow that came in really fast. And then power outages have resulted from that, which has made it hard for the plows to get fuel.”
The snow comes fast, knocks out power, the loss of power strands the plows that need fuel to clear the snow. Cowboy State Daily also reported at least one accident involving a WYDOT plow truck. Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken posted on Facebook Monday about “prolonged power outages and limited transport capability across Rawlins and central Carbon County.”
Courtesy Marianne Nelson via cowboystatedaily.com
What Drivers Need to Know
If you are departing Tuesday before 8 a.m., assume I-80 westbound between Cheyenne and Rawlins is still closed and check the WYDOT road conditions page before leaving. When the corridor reopens, all the traffic that built up overnight funnels onto a single open interstate at once.
For high-profile vehicles, the Cooper Cove to Quealy Dome blow-over zone between Arlington and Laramie remains the segment to think twice about. Even when WYDOT lifts the formal closure, that stretch is where crosswinds catch tall vehicles broadside. Three-Peak Mountain Snowflake (3PMSF) tires are the industry standard for spring-storm conditions like these. If you do get stuck, our guide on how to get a car out of deep snow in under five minutes walks through the technique.
NWS Cheyenne issued Freeze Warnings overnight into Tuesday with overnight lows as low as 12°F in Carbon County. Any pavement wet from Monday’s snow could refreeze into black ice for the Tuesday morning commute, even after WYDOT reopens the interstate.
This story will be updated as WYDOT reopens the I-80 corridor and as NWS Cheyenne publishes storm totals
Â
