Contractual performance criteria and mandatory forecast verification are being evaluated by several state Departments of Transportation as a means of ensuring that a dependable winter maintenance forecast service is obtained. Toward this end, Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc. has performed a critical evaluation of the operational road and bridge temperature forecasts it provided to the Iowa DOT during the 2002-2003 winter maintenance season. The results, based on over 1.25 million forecast / observation pairs, set a reasonable benchmark for forecast performance within the industry. The evaluation also illustrates the complexities of forecasting road and bridge temperatures, and exposes potentially erroneous readings from the road temperature sensors against which forecast quality must be gauged.