Off the east side of Highway 2 above the Middle Fork of the Flathead River, this camera tower is northeast of the little community of Essex, at mile 179.9. Essex was probably once a larger community as there are large railroad yards here and a Wye for turning trains around. About 45 miles to the west is the city of Columbia Falls, then Whitefish a few more miles west. There are three cameras on this tower, this one looking south down Highway 2.
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: