The California Department of Transportation offers a fast-loading page for looking up road conditions. If you plan on making a ski run to Lake Tahoe this winter, you could select “Add to Home Screen” to create a button for that page on your iPhone. For example, I-80, which runs from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, currently shows the following alerts:

This highway information is the latest reported as of Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 23:35 .




I 80  
    [IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA] 
    A HIGH WIND ADVISORY IS IN EFFECT AT THE SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND BAY BRIDGE  
/IN SAN FRANCISCO/ (SAN FRANCISCO,ALAMEDA CO) - TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED  
FOR CAMPERS, TRAILERS OR PERMIT LOADS  

    [IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA & THE SIERRA NEVADA] 
**FOR EASTBOUND TRAFFIC: 
    CHAINS ARE REQUIRED ON ALL VEHICLES EXCEPT 4-WHEEL-DRIVE VEHICLES WITH SNOW 
TIRES ON ALL 4 WHEELS FROM 1 MI EAST OF BAXTER (PLACER CO) TO THE  
DONNER LAKE INTERCHANGE (NEVADA CO) 

    EASTBOUND TRUCKS ARE BEING SCREENED AT APPLEGATE (PLACER CO) - DRIVERS MUST  
HAVE MINIMUM CHAINS IN THEIR POSSESSION IN ORDER TO PROCEED - PERMIT LOADS ARE 
PROHIBITED 

**FOR WESTBOUND TRAFFIC: 
    CHAINS ARE REQUIRED ON ALL VEHICLES EXCEPT 4-WHEEL-DRIVE VEHICLES WITH SNOW 
TIRES ON ALL 4 WHEELS FROM TO THE DONNER LAKE INTERCHANGE (NEVADA CO) WHITMORE  
(PLACER CO)  

    WESTBOUND TRUCKS ARE BEING SCREENED 5 MI WEST OF RENO (WASHOE CO) - DRIVERS  
MUST HAVE MINIMUM CHAINS IN THEIR POSSESSION IN ORDER TO PROCEED - PERMIT LOADS 
ARE PROHIBITED 

Unfortunately, after you search for a particular highway, the website displays the results without changing the URL. So, how can you bookmark a particular highway?

http://www.dot.ca.gov/cgi-bin/roadscell.cgi?roadnumber=80,280,680,101,580,680

This covers all the major routes from the San Francisco Bay Area to Lake Tahoe. You can manually enter any highway numbers into the URL string and bookmark that page. Better than typing in a bunch of highway numbers into the search field every time.