Here, we are just on the Montana side of the Montana-North Dakota state line. On the north side of the highway, just on the Montana side, are two casinos. A quarter of a mile west are two more casinos, leading one to believe that there are no casinos in North Dakota. The nearest town, Bainville, Montana, 8 miles to the west, is very small and has a casino of its own. Across the highway, on the south side, is this tower with a single camera looking west at Montana, totally ignoring North Dakota.
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: