Historical Winter Weather Assessment for Snow Fence Design Using a Numerical Weather Model

Details

• Creators:
  Ohara, Noriaki
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Wyoming. Department of Civil Engineering
• Corporate Contributors:
  Wyoming. Department of Transportation ; Transportation Pooled Fund Program ; United States. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Snow fences
  • Weather
  • Snow
  • Mathematical models
  • Simulation
  • Snow Fence
  • Winter Weather
  • Prevailing
  • Wind Directions
  • Snow Precipitation
  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  FHWA-WY-17/03
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Wyoming ; United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Wyoming. Department of Transportation
• Abstract:
  Noriaki Ohara, Ph.D., Assistant Professor (0000-0002-7829-0779) ; Snow fence is an effective hazard mitigation measure for the low visibility and low friction of the road surface under ; winter weather condition. Prevailing wind directions and snow precipitation data prepared by Dr. R. Tabler (the ; Tabler data) that are necessary for snow fence design have not been updated since the 1990s. This project provides ; new, seamless wind field and snow precipitation data under the adverse winter storm conditions during 1980-2014, ; using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data ; input. The simulated wind fields were successfully validated by using the observed data from airport sites and using ; the Tabler data. The WRF simulated precipitation data were assimilated to the observation-based PRISM data in ; order to obtain the accurate hourly snow precipitation data. Combining all the weather variables, the number of ; blowing snow events is found to be increasing despite the increasing air temperature because of the sufficiently cold ; winters of Wyoming. Finally, it was verified that the existing snow fence system is effective under the winter season ; prevailing wind since the simulation agrees with the Tabler data. However, it was also found that the simulated wind ; patterns during the blowing snow events can be quite different from the winter season average prevailing wind field. ; Moreover, the historical wind statistics indicated large deviations in wind direction along I-80.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  RS06215
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/32429/dot_32429_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.51 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:2e59e9ad36d1f2b72e0b82c8d20649babd2d3cec69193035683281ecd949ac6a