The I-4 disaster of 9 January 2008: could it have been predicted?

Early on 9 January 2008, smoke and dense fog associated with a wildfire in central Florida drifted across Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando. A series of pileups involving 70-vehicles, killed 5 and injured 38. We used the mesoscale weather prediction model (MM5), a fine scale smoke drift model (PB-Piedmont), and a superdense fog (superfog) estimation model (SFM1) to simulate weather events leading up to the time of the disaster. A mesoscale high pressure area migrated into northeastern Florida early on 9 January 2008. A shift in the pressure field in a surface layer only 10 m deep turned winds from blowing from the southeast to blow from the northeast. This event lasted only for a few hours but was timed to blow smoke over the expressway during ambient conditions of 100% relative humidity accompanied by local fog. Then the wind shifted to blow smoke/fog southwestward down the expressway in a manner to conceal stopped vehicles from oncoming traffic.

Our results show that current models are capable of predicting the events that caused the I-4 disaster.