About Arrowhead Webcam
An independent site that puts Lake Arrowhead's cameras, roads, and weather on one page.
Why This Site Exists
After helping to build my own cabin in Lake Arrowhead, I realized that the information I needed to get up the hill was thin, if not obsolete. For anybody who lives up the hill or visits the area, you know that the weather can be unpredictable.
After 2023's "snowmageddon", I realized that you can easily get to a closed road and have to completely turn around. Even non-winter driving has road closures, high wind areas, foggy areas, and more. So, this site was designed to help all of us out!
A storm that looked minor from the valley turns into six inches at 5,000 feet. The information you need before leaving home is real, public, and free.. but it is scattered across half a dozen government pages and camera portals that were never designed to be read together.
Arrowhead Webcam exists to collapse that into a single page. Open it and you can see what the village looks like right now, whether the highways are open, whether chains are required, what the temperature is at lake level, and whether snow is expected in the next six hours and five days. No account is needed, and the site is free to use.
The site is run independently. It is not operated by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Caltrans, the Lake Arrowhead Village, the Arrowhead Lake Association, San Bernardino County, or any other agency or business in the area.
Where the Information Comes From
Live village and lake cameras
Streamed from Google Nest cameras positioned around Lake Arrowhead Village, the waterfront, the village entrance, and Running Springs. These are live streams, not recordings, and they are embedded using Nest’s public sharing mechanism.
Highway cameras
Pulled from the Caltrans public traffic camera network along Highway 18 and the approach routes through San Bernardino and Highland. Caltrans refreshes these images on its own schedule.
Road conditions
Read directly from the Caltrans highway information service for Highways 18, 173, and 330, and refreshed every 15 minutes. Chain controls and closures appear here as soon as Caltrans publishes them.
Weather, forecast, and radar
Current conditions and the five-day outlook come from the Google Weather API. The six-hour rain and snow timeline and the precipitation radar use Google’s minute-by-minute nowcast model, refreshed every few minutes during active weather.
What This Site Is Not
It is not an official source, and it should never be the last thing you check before driving into a storm. I have recently updated the weather data to include mapping, and (much more) up-to-date information. Obviously, the cameras are live, so they are a nice complement to the road condition data.
Just know that camera feeds go offline often (sometimes due to Edison electric issues) or simply from dead feeds. Due to increased fire and snow events, conditions change rapidly. Road data is cached (saved) each 15 minutes. Forecasts are forecasts.
Treat what you see here as a fast first look, then confirm with Caltrans, QuickMap, and the National Weather Service before you commit to the drive. Our full Terms of Use spell this out.
How the Site Is Funded
Arrowhead Webcam is free to use and supported by advertising, which covers the server and the weather data costs. I keep ads out of the way of the cameras and conditions, because those are the reason you came. What I collect and how advertising works is described in the Privacy Policy.
Contact
If you have any questions, corrections, a camera worth adding, or a broken feed, reach out at [email protected], or [email protected] for anything technical.