Winter storm road conditions: How to check your area online

A large swath the United States was blanketed in snow over the weekend. If you need to drive in it, you should make a plan first.

Snow makes for fun social media videos, but it's not fun to travel in. Thankfully, the U.S. government maintains a website where you can find interactive, real-time road condition maps for basically every state or region in the country. It's mainly just a collection of links to other websites run by each state, but it's easy enough to find what you need. As a warning, you might need to scroll down and click through one or two links once you're at each state's Department of Transportation website, but I was quickly able to find good maps everywhere I looked.

According to the National Weather Service's snowfall analysis map, much of the U.S. was covered in anywhere from three to 18 inches of snow in some places on Saturday and Sunday. Kids across the country are either doing snow days or remote days to start the week, while everyone else is just trying to stay warm.

If you absolutely must get out in the weather for any reason, just make sure you check one of these maps first.