An Experiment in Anti-Icing Technologies on Anemometers

The aggregation of ice on anemometers leads to underestimation of wind speeds or can completely encapsulate anemometers making them incapable of any wind measurements. In recent years, superhydrophobic coatings, which repel water droplets on a variety of materials, have been made readily available. During the winter of 2013/14, a field experiment in Oklahoma compared three RM-Young wind monitors for icing conditions in real weather conditions. One wind monitor was manually coated in a superhydrophobic material, one was a RM Young Alpine wind monitor designed for anti-icing conditions, and the third was an unaltered control RM Young wind monitor. Results showed minimal improvements in wind measurements with the superhydrophobic coated wind monitor.