Best route from Vancouver to Cresent City CA
We are planning to get through Canada roads over close to Vancouver and then go south to Crescent City CA, where we will de-winterize and carry on with our trip for two weeks. We will be driving a 27...
Forum Discussion
The likelihood of snow along I5 is about the same all the way from Vancouver to Grants Pass. It's all about the same low altitude. Snow results when there is cold air on the east side of the Cascades, which flows through the passes to meat with moist air from the ocean.
If the on shore flow is too strong, we'll get rain, not snow. If the cold flow from the east is too strong we'll get cold dry weather. So snow requires just the right pairing of conditions, and that can occur anywhere along the corridor. But a couple of areas are prone to problems:
- in the north, flow through the Frasier Canyon and out over Vancouver and northern Washington makes cold and snow more likely there.
- the Columbia Gorge is particularly low, so icy conditions along I84 and around Portland are common - more so than Seattle
- on the Orgeon/california border, there isn't a central valley. So cold and wet can meet at I5 pass level. But Brookings on the coast is called the 'banana belt of Oregon'.
So depending on the inland cold, and the track of a storm, you could pass from cold/dry to snow to ice to rain as you drive from Vancouver to Oregon.
State DOTs are good sources of info regarding road conditions:
DriveBC, WSDOT and TripCheck (oregon).
Lots of web cams and road condition sensors.
If the on shore flow is too strong, we'll get rain, not snow. If the cold flow from the east is too strong we'll get cold dry weather. So snow requires just the right pairing of conditions, and that can occur anywhere along the corridor. But a couple of areas are prone to problems:
- in the north, flow through the Frasier Canyon and out over Vancouver and northern Washington makes cold and snow more likely there.
- the Columbia Gorge is particularly low, so icy conditions along I84 and around Portland are common - more so than Seattle
- on the Orgeon/california border, there isn't a central valley. So cold and wet can meet at I5 pass level. But Brookings on the coast is called the 'banana belt of Oregon'.
So depending on the inland cold, and the track of a storm, you could pass from cold/dry to snow to ice to rain as you drive from Vancouver to Oregon.
State DOTs are good sources of info regarding road conditions:
DriveBC, WSDOT and TripCheck (oregon).
Lots of web cams and road condition sensors.
