Lincoln, NE to San Diego-Warm Weather ASAP

With the current weather pattern you may better off taking a northern route - where drivers and DOT used to snow and ice. Ice in southern areas can be worse than packed snow on northern highways.

RWDIII wrote:
Make your way to Denver,take 25 to I10 to I8 at Casa Grande ariz the I8 to San Diego

The only change I would make to this route would be to cut the corner and pick up I25 @ Albuquerque

msmith1199 wrote:

hhornig wrote:
I will be driving to San Diego for New Years and I want to get into warm weather asap, but not going too far out of my way. Would appreciate suggested routes to keep me warm.

Didn't you hear about the ice storm that they are expecting to hit San Diego by New Years? Temps in the teens and snow are expected! :)

Can you believe my joke here actually came true?? There are snow storms in San Diego County right now! I guess I better quit joking like that.

:h

I gotta disagree with the US 75 route.

We go back and forth to Ft. Worth from home here in South Dakota.

Best route for us is straight south on US 81, which turns into I-135 in Kansas and then I-35 south at Wichita. Four lane all the way south starting in Norfolk, Nebraska.

Since you are in Lincoln, just chug a little west on I-80 to York, Nebraska and go south on US 81.

Wichita is an easy drive through. Oklahoma City is not as bad as it once was. Take I-35 West at Denton and avoid Dallas, Ft. Worth is not as bad as Dallas.

From Lincoln the shortest way to warmer weather is US-75 down to Dallas then I-35 to San Antonio, so you can follow I-10, the southern-most Interstate. But depending on how air masses move around, it can be pretty cold all the way down to at least Austin, and again along I-10 in the high country west of San Antonio maybe as far as Tucson.

However, US-75 may not be the fastest way, because there are cities to slow you down, like Omaha, Topeka and Tulsa, and quite a few of small towns without recently built bypasses.

You don't have much in the way of diagonal routes to cut distances, so the route is mostly sides of rectangles. There is thus nothing too much out of the way so long as you keep going south and west.

Timing is important. If you were to leave on US-75 now, you will be in 50+ temperatures by the time you get through Kansas, in the 60s in North Texas, so you could start across I-30 at Dallas/Fort Worth rather than going down to I-10. But but the time you get to New Mexico, you will be in a sub-freezing air mass. Wait 2-3 days, that cold air from the west will have moved over the plains and there will be no place warm much north of I-10.

msmith1199 wrote:

hhornig wrote:
I will be driving to San Diego for New Years and I want to get into warm weather asap, but not going too far out of my way. Would appreciate suggested routes to keep me warm.

Didn't you hear about the ice storm that they are expecting to hit San Diego by New Years? Temps in the teens and snow are expected! :)

Eagle is forecast to have a 10/10 day. 10" snow and 10 degrees.

hhornig wrote:
I will be driving to San Diego for New Years and I want to get into warm weather asap, but not going too far out of my way. Would appreciate suggested routes to keep me warm.

Didn't you hear about the ice storm that they are expecting to hit San Diego by New Years? Temps in the teens and snow are expected! :)

I volunteer to come with and navigate!!

hhornig wrote:
I will be driving to San Diego for New Years and I want to get into warm weather asap, but not going too far out of my way. Would appreciate suggested routes to keep me warm.

With the forecast for the next week or so in consideration (SNOW -- and lots of it in the Colorado mountains), consider dropping all the way down I-25 to New Mexico and then taking I-40 west. In Arizona, you could consider dropping down to Phoenix and taking I-10 the remainder of the way. Though further in distance, this would accomplish your goal of staying warm. The LAST thing you want it to take I-70 west from Denver and get stuck with a road shutdown due to weather. That said, it's all about timing. IF you time it right, you could make the I-70 run. Much depends on what you're driving and how comfortable you are with mountain driving in the snow.

hhornig wrote:
I will be driving to San Diego for New Years and I want to get into warm weather asap, but not going too far out of my way. Would appreciate suggested routes to keep me warm.

Any road that will get you there as quickly as possible, and keep driving.