A common complaint from wintertime Blue Ridge Parkway visitors is seeing a “Parkway closed for winter weather” gate, when the skies are sunny and the air is warm. They can’t see the snow and ice a few miles down the road. A newly launched Blue Ridge Parkway weather site will help visitors understand the fickle nature of parkway weather, said Carolyn Ward, with the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, the fundraising nonprofit for the parkway. The foundation, along with the parkway, Appalachian State University and RaysWeather.com, have partnered to launch specialized weather websites – BRPweather.com and BRPwebcams.org – just to keep weather tabs on the parkway and its 469-mile stretch of scenic roadway from the Smokies in Cherokee to Shenandoah National Park in Waynesboro, Va. Using information from weather stations and webcams installed along the parkway, the weather sites include custom forecasts, live weather conditions, live webcam images and video, radar and satellite imagery and climate information.