{"id":23545,"date":"2025-02-13T21:21:23","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T04:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/coal-bank-molas-passes-to-close-thursday-night-ahead-of-storm\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:38:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:38:23","slug":"coal-bank-molas-passes-to-close-thursday-night-ahead-of-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/coal-bank-molas-passes-to-close-thursday-night-ahead-of-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Coal Bank, Molas passes to close Thursday night ahead of storm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=1d2d4f02-9cc6-442c-8623-8d0f63246852&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1928\" height=\"1285\" alt=\"Four mountain passes \u2013 Wolf Creek, Coal Bank, Molas and Red Mountain \u2013 will be closed Thursday morning for avalanche mitigation.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Four mountain passes \u2013 Wolf Creek, Coal Bank, Molas and Red Mountain \u2013 will be closed Thursday morning for avalanche mitigation.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The Colorado Department of Transportation closed Coal Bank and Molas passes between Durango and Silverton on Thursday night as a safety precaution in anticipation of heavy snowfall.<\/p>\n<p>The passes were expected to close at 8 p.m. and reopen midday Friday after maintenance operations.<\/p>\n<p>Weather forecasters were calling for up to 2 inches of snowfall per hour, according to a CDOT news release.<\/p>\n<p>The closure points are from just north of Purgatory Resort and Cascade Village (mile point 53) north to Silverton (mile point 70).<\/p>\n<p>Red Mountain Pass between Silverton and Ouray was expected to remain open Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>Forecasters warned that snow will be heavy going into the weekend across Southwest Colorado, including in the mountains and valleys. The San Juan Mountains are particularly favored for heavy snow.<\/p>\n<p>Travelers are advised to be prepared for treacherous road conditions and additional weather safety closures, including on Red Mountain, Wolf Creek and Lizard Head passes, among others.<\/p>\n<p>For up-to-date road conditions, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cotrip.org\/home#notifications\" id=\"link-55451ca2c06a86df2fb71766142a7d16\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">COtrip.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Weather forecasters call for 2 inches of snowfall per hour<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2235,28,2590,2591,1384,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coal-bank-pass","tag-headlines","tag-molas-pass","tag-transport","tag-u-s-highway-550","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78171,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23545\/revisions\/78171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23545"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}