The Road Weather Forecast System (RWFS) was developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research for the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) project. The RWFS ingests data from a variety of numerical models (i.e. ETA, AVN, MOS) and observational platforms to provide optimized forecasts of both standard weather and "extended" highway parameters for departments of transportation.

Verification study results of the RWFS are presented. Forecast fields such as air temperature, wind speed and precipitation type as well as road temperature are compared to real-time observations of Aviation Routine Weather Reports (METARs) and Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS). The air temperature and road temperature forecasts are broken into different categories based on coincident observations of cloud cover and precipitation type for the comparison. The road temperature forecast is also compared using output with and without the application of recommended road treatments generated by the RWFS. The effects of forecast length on the RWFS output are also examined. Quality of the observations used for verification is addressed by comparing those from neighboring METAR and RWIS stations.