On the wind piece, I just remembered heading west across 80 a few years back and hitting 85mph winds just east of Cheyenne. They were so strong the constant pounding on my fiberglass bed cover backed a screw out of the latch and we almost lost the whole thing. Fortunately we were able to pull off and into a truck stop in Cheyenne and jerry rig it down for the remainder fo the trip.
In the early 2000s we were headed home across 80 and the weather man forecasted a dusting to a couple inches of snow near Elk Mountain. To make a long story short, the wind came up and we got caught in a blizzard. We finally made it to Cheyenne several hours later, and the only way we knew if we were on the road or not was by getting so close behind a semi that we could see the clearance lights on the back of his trailer. That was the most disorienting and terrifying drive of my life. We got checked into LaQuinta in Cheyenne, and the interstate was promply closed all the way to North Platte for a couple days. When we got back on the road, 80 looked like a junkyard until we were a ways into NE with cars in the ditches and median everywhere. The winter storms in that part of WY are no joke.