On the inside if a bend in Highway 78, this three camera tower is barely a mile south of the little community of Roscoe, Montana. Highway 78 is a secondary route between Highway 212 and I 90, its northern end at Columbus and its southern end at Red Lodge. This is the downward looking camera, staring distractedly at the road, hoping something exciting will happen, and soon.
One of 73 highway cameras, this is part of Montana's Road Weather Information System (RWIS) which provides not only visual assessments of highways and travel conditions, but meteorological information. RWIS cameras are mounted on a tall steel truss tower adjacent to the roadway along with sensors that measure Air Temperature, Road Air Temperature, Dew Point, Relative Humidity, Wind Speed and Direction, Wind Gusts, Precipitation Intensity, Precipitation Rate, and Precipitation Accumulation. All this data is telemetered to a central location and appears on the appropriate web page in real time.
From the main RWIS page one may select the image or the data page for each of the 73 cameras. Seven of the RWIS sites are data only and one has a camera only, while the rest have both a camera and data sensors. There is also a MAP Page, which allows one to see a thumbnail image and the weather data from any of the RWIS sites by clicking on its icon on the map.
Push the buttons below for current: