Application of Road Weather Information Systems in the western United States

The NOAA Cooperative Institute for Regional Prediction has developed software to link together weather observations from over 2100 stations in the western United States. These observations supplement those at the roughly 350 stations in the NWS/FAA surface aviation network. We refer to this collection of regional and local networks as MesoWest. MesoWest includes observations from Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS) in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.

Integration of the RWIS observations with those provided by other agencies makes it possible to create analyses of surface weather conditions every 15 minutes over the western United States. The MesoWest data are used by personnel of the Utah Department of Transportation at the state Traffic Operations Center and at field offices for winter road maintenance. The process by which the RWIS data are retrieved, processed, archived, and displayed will be described.