Breaking

El Niño Pattern Set to Bring Hazardous Winter Conditions to Western Mountain Freight Routes

A strong El Niño pattern is underway, threatening to deliver a significantly wetter winter across western mountain corridors and posing acute risks to carriers navigating the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain passes, according to Ben Hershey, DTN product manager of transportation and logistics. While warmer-than-average temperatures are expected across much of the central United States, major snow events remain possible across the northern, central, and southern plains. Below-freezing conditions will still penetrate the South during brief periods. The greater concern for fleet operators lies westbound, where repeated heavy precipitation could substantially challenge high-volume mountain routes used to transport freight from western origins toward central and eastern destinations. DTN has launched WeatherHub, a weather intelligence platform featuring hyperlocal road-condition data and a patent-pending crash risk index that fuses historical crash records with real-time traffic data and forecasted weather to generate forward-looking crash probability along given routes. Carriers should monitor these tools closely and prepare contingency plans for extended winter weather impacts on critical corridors.