Interest in road / weather information systems is experiencing a significant growth within the department of transportation in many
states. Unfortunately, the siting of road / weather sensors is often
not well communicated between the transportation personnel who use the
information for making location-specific maintenance decisions and the
meteorological community who desire to use the information to provide
more accurate and timely weather and road condition forecasts. Through a collaborative effort it is possible to provide an optimum solution for all users of this important resource. Further, careful consideration of additional surface weather sensing stations managed by other state and federal agencies while designing a road /weather information system can result in a statewide weather information system of extraordinary quality.
The design of the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s (Mn/DOT)
expanded road / weather information system was a combined effort between Mn/DOT personnel and the meteorological community. Meteorologists from the University of North Dakota Regional Weather Information Center and maintenance engineers from Mn/DOT canvassed the State of Minnesota to evaluate the best possible locations for new road / weather environmental sensor stations. Careful consideration of the needs of the transportation community as well as an understanding of the existing distribution of surface weather monitoring stations produced an integrated statewide network design of surface weather sensors. The detailed documentation of site obstructions has also resulted in an identification of potential limitations to sensor use in operational forecasting / mesoscale modeling and has provided a valuable tool for aiding the identification of local climatological features