Snoqualmie Pass chain checks end today: the bare-and-dry pass is still being checked
Daily edition · Checkpoint schedule — Snoqualmie Pass, Washington
Published November 4, 2026 · TruckRescueNow daily edition — Day 3
The last day of the checks
Yesterday this page carried the two-day schedule. Today the emphasis is in its final day: troopers are on the I-90 pass corridor, North Bend to Ellensburg, educating and enforcing the chain carry rule through the end of the day.
A driver crossing Snoqualmie today meets the check as a fact of the road, not a warning about tomorrow. Tomorrow it is over — and the carry rule it enforced is not.
That split is the whole item: the emphasis ends tonight; the season runs to April 1.
Morning Coffee Brief
Today is the second and final day of the Washington State Patrol's commercial-vehicle chain enforcement emphasis on I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass — North Bend, milepost 32, to Ellensburg, milepost 101.
This morning the pass is open in both directions with no restrictions: bare and dry, with ice in places, and 34 degrees at the summit. The checks run anyway, because the rule being enforced never depended on the surface.
The carry rule: November 1 to April 1, vehicles over 10,000 pounds GVW carry tire chains on this corridor — at least two extra chains — in any weather. WSP posts the emphasis results after it ends today; no results exist yet.
Bare, dry, and still illegal without chains
WSDOT's morning report is the trap in plain form: the pass open both ways, no restrictions posted, the surface bare and dry with ice in places. A driver reading the road concludes he is legal. A driver reading the calendar knows better.
The must-carry rule runs November 1 to April 1 for vehicles over 10,000 pounds GVW, with at least two extra chains carried in the truck. It applies on a 34-degree dry morning exactly as it applies in a storm.
Yesterday's piece carried the benchmark: in November 2024, the last two-day emphasis found 64 chain violations in 146 inspections. Those trucks were not caught by weather either.
What happens after today
WSP says the results of this emphasis post on social media after it ends — so any number attached to this week's checks that you hear today is not a result, because none has been published.
What a driver takes forward is simpler than a results table. The chain box gets checked before milepost 32 on every crossing until spring, the same way the fuel gauge gets checked before a long stretch.
And the corridor's other winter fact stands: there is no chain stop over the pass itself, so the preparation happens at the corridor's ends or it does not happen.
Stopped or stuck on the pass ground
Between North Bend and Ellensburg, the service ground sits at the two ends of the pass. At the east end, Ellensburg's Exit 106 cluster — Love's with 85 spaces and the ONE9 lot at Exit 109 with 100 public spaces — is where pass traffic collects and where repair and towing stage from.
