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I am driving from the Seattle area to Dallas in the next few days (early December) and probably return in January. Mapquest or any similar mapping tool sends me through Colorado. I'm concerned about winter driving conditions that might make an alternate route that adds many addtional miles to the trip the way to go. Can someone advise me the best route for this time of year or a resource that can help me?
Welcome to the RTA Forum!
This simple fact is that there is no way to go to Dallas from Seattle without running into the possibility of hitting bad weather. Every way you could go is going to cross mountains or otherwise be at risk for seeing snow and ice (including your ending point of Dallas!).
The best bet is to plan to go the most direct route. Since that route will get you to your destination the fastest, it will have you off the road the soonest, and thus reduce your odds of hitting bad weather. Planning to add hundreds of extra miles by staying south (say going to SoCal then east) really doesn't help your cause at all, because you can still see bad weather across I-10, and I-5 includes several significant mountain passes.
The best thing I could suggest is to go with the most direct route, down towards Salt Lake City, across utah to I-25, down to Denver, and across I-70, unless you see a specific weather forecast that suggests that you have a high probability of seeing bad weather in a certain area. If, for example, you see that there is a bad storm expected across Utah or Wyoming, you could take I-90 to I-25 in Montana without adding many extra miles.
For planning purposes, I'd look at this for your primary route, and be prepared to take alternates depending on up-to-the-minute conditions:
I-90/I-82/I-84/I-80/I-25/US-64/US-87/US-287. 2125 miles.
Alternates in order of preference:
I-90/I-25, then as above. 2175 miles.
I-5/CA-58/I-40/US-287. 2525 miles. (!)
I-5/I-210/CA-57/I-10/I-20. 2575 miles. (!)
Allow at least 4 days for this trip, it's over 2000 miles. If you have to take one of the last 2 alternates, add yet another day.