Guide
Road closures on the coast highways
Checked September 13, 2026 against the Washington State Department of Transportation and state law.
The Highways tile repeats what the Washington State Department of Transportation publishes about the roads your town depends on. On this coast most of those roads have no alternative, which is what makes a closure here different from a closure somewhere with a grid.
The roads, and why one closure is a long way round
The routes below are defined in state law, which is the only place their endpoints are set out exactly.
| Route | Runs |
|---|---|
| US 101 | the spine: from the Columbia at Ilwaco north by South Bend and Raymond, through Aberdeen and Hoquiam, then by Lake Quinault to Forks and on around the peninsula |
| SR 103 | Seaview north through Long Beach to Leadbetter Point — the Long Beach Peninsula’s only through road |
| SR 100 | Ilwaco west and south to the state park at Cape Disappointment |
| SR 105 | Raymond west by Tokeland and North Cove to the shore north of Westport, with the spur from Westport back to Aberdeen |
| SR 109 | Hoquiam northwest by Ocean City, Copalis, Pacific Beach and Moclips — built and signed as far as Taholah |
| SR 115 | Ocean Shores east and north to SR 109 — the only way on or off the Ocean Shores peninsula |
| SR 4 | US 101 at Johnson’s Landing southeast by Kelso |
| SR 6 | Raymond east to Chehalis |
| US 12 | Aberdeen east by Montesano to Elma, and on to I-5 north of Centralia |
| SR 8 | Elma east to US 101 west of Olympia — with US 12, the way inland from Grays Harbor |
| SR 110 | US 101 north of Forks west to La Push |
| SR 112 | the Makah Reservation boundary east by Clallam Bay to Port Angeles — the only road to Neah Bay, Sekiu and Clallam Bay |
| SR 113 | US 101 at Sappho north to SR 112 at Clallam Bay — the short cut between the two, and the way round a closure on either |
| SR 20 | US 101 at Discovery Bay north-east to Port Townsend — the only road in, and the one the Coupeville ferry queue stands on |
| SR 19 | the Rhody Drive route from US 101 up the Chimacum valley to Port Hadlock and SR 20 — the inland way round SR 20 |
| SR 116 | SR 19 across Indian Island to Marrowstone — one bridge, and nothing behind it but the island |
| I-5 | the Pierce County line at Federal Way north through Seattle, Everett, Mount Vernon and Burlington, Bellingham and Ferndale to the Peace Arch at Blaine — the spine of the whole east shore, and the first interstate on any board |
| SR 548 | Ferndale north through Birch Bay to Blaine — the shore road, and the way to Birch Bay off the freeway |
| SR 11 | Chuckanut Drive, Bellingham south along the water to Bow — the old shore road, closed by slides more often than the freeway is |
| SR 539 | the Guide Meridian, Bellingham north to Lynden and the Aldergrove crossing |
| SR 542 | the Mount Baker Highway, Bellingham east to Deming — the board reads it as far as the Nooksack forks, not to the ski area |
| SR 543 | the Blaine truck crossing, I-5 to the border |
| SR 20 | the Anacortes ferry terminal across Fidalgo Island to Burlington, and over Deception Pass down Whidbey Island through Oak Harbor and Coupeville to Keystone — the only road onto Fidalgo, the way to the San Juan ferries, and the only road onto Whidbey that is not a boat |
| SR 525 | Keystone south through Greenbank, Freeland and Langley to the Clinton ferry — the length of south Whidbey |
| SR 532 | Camano Island to Stanwood and I-5 — the only road on and off Camano |
| US 2 | Everett east across the Snohomish delta trestle to Monroe — the way over the Cascades, and a bottleneck at the trestle |
| SR 104 | I-5 west to the Edmonds ferry terminal |
| SR 526 | the Boeing freeway, Everett west to SR 525 at Mukilteo |
| SR 528 | Marysville east from I-5 to SR 9 |
| SR 529 | Everett across the Snohomish River to Marysville — the old bridge, the alternative to I-5 |
| SR 99 | Aurora Avenue through Shoreline and Seattle, the tunnel under downtown, and Pacific Highway South past the airport to Federal Way — the shore’s inland twin, and where I-5 traffic goes when I-5 stops |
| SR 509 | the First Avenue South bridge over the Duwamish, through Burien and Des Moines to Dash Point, Browns Point and the Tacoma tideflats — the south end’s own freeway |
| SR 518 | Burien east past Sea-Tac to I-5 — the airport spur |
| SR 520 | the Montlake bridge across Lake Washington to Bellevue — one of Seattle’s two ways east, read to the far shore and no further |
| I-90 | the floating bridge across Mercer Island to Bellevue — the other way east, and the road over Snoqualmie Pass |
| SR 3 | the Hood Canal bridge south through Poulsbo, Silverdale and Bremerton, then on through Belfair and Allyn to Shelton — the spine of the Kitsap peninsula, and the road a Hood Canal bridge closure strands |
| SR 16 | Gorst and Port Orchard south through Gig Harbor, over the Tacoma Narrows bridge to I-5 in Tacoma — the way off the Kitsap peninsula that is not a boat, and Gig Harbor’s main street |
| SR 166 | Port Orchard to Gorst along Sinclair Inlet |
| SR 303 | the Waaga Way, Bremerton north to Silverdale |
| SR 304 | SR 3 to the Bremerton ferry terminal |
| SR 305 | the Bainbridge Island ferry terminal across Agate Pass to Poulsbo — the island’s one road off, and the queue for the boat |
| SR 307 | Bond Road, Poulsbo to the Kingston ferry |
| SR 160 | Sedgwick Road, SR 16 through Port Orchard to the Southworth ferry — the road to the boat, and Southworth’s only one |
| SR 163 | Pearl Street, Tacoma out to the Point Defiance ferry — the queue for the Tahlequah boat |
| SR 705 | I-5 into downtown Tacoma and Schuster Parkway — the spur to the waterfront |
| SR 302 | Purdy west across the Key Peninsula toward Allyn — the only way off the peninsula, and Longbranch is at the far end of it |
| US 101 | Olympia west round Mud Bay, through Shelton and up Hood Canal to Hoodsport and Lilliwaup — the road to Steamboat Island and the whole west shore of the canal |
| SR 106 | Union along the south shore of Hood Canal to Belfair — the Great Bend’s own road |
| SR 300 | Belfair out past Belfair State Park toward Tahuya |
| SR 536 | Mount Vernon’s Memorial Highway, west from the town to SR 20 |
One legal oddity worth knowing: the statute defines SR 109 as continuing to Queets, but that stretch was never built. The road ends at Taholah, and the department’s own travel page calls it “SR 109 between Hoquiam and Taholah.”
The east end has two ways out and a ferry. Port Townsend is reached by SR 20 from US 101, or by SR 19 up the valley to Port Hadlock and across; either is an hour from the west end of this board. The third way off that corner is the Coupeville ferry, which is weather and tide dependent and is not a road at all.
Two Mason County towns have no state highway. Harstine Island is a county bridge off Pickering Passage, and Grapeview is the county’s loop road off SR 3; both carry the county’s highways tile because SR 3 is how anyone reaches either turn.
Three Thurston County towns have no state highway. Boston Harbor, Steamboat Island and Johnson Point are each reached by the county road that carries their name, off US 101 or I-5; their pages carry the county’s highways tile because those two are how anyone gets to the turn.
Four Pierce County towns have no state highway at all, and one of them has no road. Steilacoom is reached by county roads off I-5; Fox Island by a county bridge from Gig Harbor; Longbranch by the Key Peninsula Highway, a county road, out to SR 302 at Purdy. Anderson Island has no road on or off it — only Pierce County’s own ferry from Steilacoom, which is not a Washington State Ferries route. None of the four names a road of its own; each carries the county’s highways tile, because I-5 and SR 16 are still how anyone reaches the bridge, the boat or the lane.
Two Whatcom towns have no state highway at all. Point Roberts is reached by road only through Canada — BC 17 and two border crossings, which WSDOT does not carry — and Lummi Island by the county’s own ferry from Gooseberry Point, which is not a Washington State Ferries route and is not on the ferry tile. Neither town’s page names a road of its own; both carry the county’s highways tile, because I-5 is still how anyone reaches Gooseberry Point or the Peace Arch.
I-5 is the spine of this board. From Federal Way and Seattle north through Edmonds, Everett, Marysville and Stanwood to Mount Vernon, Bellingham and the border, it carries nearly every town on the east side, and the state routes beside it — 99 the length of King County, 529 over the old bridge, 528 into Marysville, 526 to Mukilteo — are what a closure sends you onto. Vashon has no state highway, and neither do Seabeck, Suquamish or Southworth. Their roads are the county’s and their ways off are boats, so those road tiles are empty on purpose and the ferry tile is the one to watch. Kitsap is a peninsula with two ways out by land — the Hood Canal bridge on SR 104 at the north end and the Tacoma Narrows on SR 16 at the south — and everything between them runs on SR 3.
On Whidbey a closure is a wait, not a detour. The island has three ways off: the Deception Pass bridge at the north end, the Coupeville ferry to Port Townsend in the middle, and the Clinton ferry to Mukilteo at the south end. SR 20 and SR 525 are the only roads along it, so a closure on either has no parallel route — the alternative is a boat, on the boat’s schedule. Camano has one bridge, SR 532 to Stanwood, and nothing else.
Neither have the San Juan Islands, Guemes Island or La Conner. The islands’ roads are San Juan County’s and the way off is the state ferry from Friday Harbor, Orcas or Lopez to Anacortes; Guemes is the Skagit County ferry from Anacortes; La Conner is reached by county roads off SR 20. None of those pages names a road of its own, and every one carries the board’s highways tile, because SR 20 to Anacortes is how the islands reach the mainland.
The boat, which is also a road
Hood Canal is one road. Quilcene and Brinnon are on US 101 and nothing else: the highway runs down the west side of the canal from Discovery Bay to Shelton, and there is no parallel route on that shore. A closure between the two towns is not a delay, it is a forty-mile detour round the head of the canal or over the Hood Canal bridge, and the tile says how far off the closure is so a reader in Brinnon is not led by something at Sequim. The bridge itself — SR 104 across the canal’s north end — is not on these towns’ tile: it is twenty-five miles from Quilcene and forty-five from Brinnon, and WSDOT publishes its openings on a feed separate from its closures, which this board does not yet read.
Port Townsend and Port Hadlock carry a ferry tile, and no other town on this board does: the crossing sails from Port Townsend to Coupeville on Whidbey Island, twenty-five minutes, and a reader at Neah Bay is a hundred and twenty miles from the dock.
The tile reads three things from Washington State Ferries, all of them the department’s own. The next sailings from Port Townsend, with the vessel. Whether a sailing is cancelled — that is WSF’s own flag on the departure, never a guess made here from the forecast. And how many drive-up spaces the terminal reported left on the next boats.
A space count is not a reservation. It is what the terminal reported minutes ago and cars keep arriving; the tile prints the count and says so. Reservations for this route are WSF’s own system and nothing here books, holds or predicts one.
The north Sound has three operators’ boats, and each town sees its own. The San Juan Islands are Washington State Ferries’ Anacortes route, read the same way: Friday Harbor and Roche Harbor see the boats from Friday Harbor, Eastsound and Orcas the boats from Orcas, Lopez the boats from Lopez, and Anacortes one list of sailings to the islands with the terminals each one is listed for. Guemes Island is Skagit County’s ferry from Anacortes; the tile prints the county’s published schedule for the day, peak or non-peak and holidays included, and says it is a schedule and not a live feed, because the county publishes no cancellation flag and sends same-day news by text and email. Lummi Island is Whatcom County’s boat from Gooseberry Point. Its site turns away servers with a browser check, so on most refreshes the tile cannot read it and says so, with the county’s ferry page and its X account, where it posts same-day news.
WSF posts terminal notices on the same feed as hiring adverts and opinion surveys. The tile carries the ones about the service — a schedule change, a boat out of service, a cancellation — and drops the rest rather than teaching you to scroll past it.
The west end is the thinnest of all. US 101 is the only road past Queets and Kalaloch and the only way into Forks from the south; SR 110 is the only road to La Push; SR 112 is the only road to Neah Bay. When the department closed US 101 at the Hoh River bridge for a bridge rebuild in autumn 2026, its own release put the detour between Forks and Hoquiam “along Hood Canal – a four-hour trip”. That is what a closure costs out here.
Look at that table as a network and the exposure is obvious. Ocean Shores has one road. The peninsula has one road. A closure on US 101 north of Hoquiam does not add twenty minutes to a journey; it adds hours, because the detour is around the whole Olympic Peninsula.
What the alerts actually say
Each alert the department publishes carries a start and end location with a milepost and a coordinate, a county, a start time and an estimated end time, a category, a status of open or closed, and a priority. The priority values are a fixed set: highest, high, medium, low, described as the “expected impact on traffic.”
The category is looser than it looks. The department documents it only as “categorization of alert, i.e. Collision, Maintenance, etc.” — those are examples, not a published list, so the tile shows the department’s own words rather than sorting them into categories that do not officially exist.
The road that is being taken by the sea
At North Cove, SR 105 runs along a shoreline that has been retreating for a century — the stretch known as Washaway Beach. This is not a storm event; it is the permanent condition of that road. The department relocated SR 105 in 1971 “after coastal erosion caused part of the highway to wash away into the Bay,” and it is now building a dynamic revetment and restoring dunes between the Shoalwater Bay Reservation and Panoramic Lane to “help protect the road and nearby community from coastal erosion and rising sea levels.”
If you are reading the board for Tokeland or North Cove, that work is the reason to expect roadwork on your only road out, and the reason a winter storm there is a different proposition from a winter storm elsewhere.
Storms, and what this coast actually gets
Winter here is wind, water and trees rather than snow and ice. A guide should not attribute more than an agency has said, and the department’s published seasonal guidance is about snow and ice, so the honest position is this: the live alerts are the record of what is closed, and the tile shows them. What makes a coastal closure worse than its length suggests is the absence of a second route, not anything exotic about the weather.
An older bridge or a long single-carriageway stretch can also close for structural repair, sometimes for days at a stretch and sometimes overnight for weeks. Those are announced in advance as alerts and news releases rather than appearing suddenly, which is the one case where checking before you set out genuinely buys you something.
The highway cameras
The Highway cameras tile shows up to three of WSDOT’s cameras on your town’s own highways, nearest first, within 25 miles. Each row names the road, the milepost, and how far from town the camera is and which way.
The picture has its own clock. WSDOT prints the date and time along the foot of every frame. That is the time of the picture: read it there. The date on the tile is a different thing — when this site last read WSDOT’s list of cameras, which changes only when WSDOT adds or retires one.
The picture comes straight from WSDOT. Your browser fetches it from images.wsdot.wa.gov; this site never handles it. If a frame will not load, the tile says WSDOT is not serving that camera’s picture, and WSDOT’s own camera pages are the place to look.
Mileposts. WSDOT writes the milepost into each camera’s own title (“US 101 at MP 88.1”), and the tile reads it from there. Every WSDOT camera on these boards carries one.
Out of service. A camera WSDOT lists as out of service never takes one of the three places; the tile counts them under the list instead.
No camera. Where WSDOT has no camera on your highway within 25 miles, the tile says so and names the nearest one on that road, with its distance. That is the one place on this site an absence is spelled out, because what is missing is WSDOT’s eye on a road you are about to drive. A town with no state highway — the San Juan Islands, Point Roberts, Lummi Island — has no camera tile at all.
The list of cameras was read from WSDOT’s camera list on September 23, 2026, and is re-read twice a year.
How to check, and the number that no longer works
511 is gone. The department switched off the statewide automated travel information line on 19 May 2023: “Starting Friday, May 19, Washington state travelers will no longer be able to access automated statewide travel information by calling 511.” Any page still listing a 511 number for Washington is out of date. Call volume had fallen from 2.2 million calls in 2009 to under 302,000 in 2022.
What replaced it, in the department’s own list: its online traveler information and real-time travel map, the mobile app, traffic cameras and email alerts, and — the one that still works with no signal — highway advisory radio on 530 AM and 1610 AM. On a coast with long stretches of no mobile coverage, the radio frequencies are the ones worth writing down.
Sources
- Washington State Department of Transportation, real-time travel map — the live picture, and the source the board reads
- Department of Transportation, Traveler Information API alert reference — the fields, the priority values and the category caveat
- Department of Transportation, deactivating the 511 phone number
- Department of Transportation, SR 105 Graveyard Spit dynamic revetment and dune restoration
- Chapter 47.17 RCW, state highway routes — where each route’s endpoints are defined