[Spridgets] Do you want a MoPED on your Spridget?

[Guy R Day]

Seeing as weather is in fashion at the moment....  Do you want a MoPED on 
the trunk of your LBC?
US National Weather Service tests mobile 'probes' to gather highway weather 
data

The USA's National Weather Service (NWS) is funding a project to collect 
real-time data from mobile weather stations mounted on of trucks, large vans 
and buses, which transmit conditions at ground level. Since March, 'weather 
boxes' have been added to some 600 vehicles and are being tracked by Global 
Science & Technology (GST), a private contractor running the test. By 
October, that should be up to some 1,500 vehicles, mostly from private 
trucking and package delivery fleets. The Mobile Platform Environmental Data 
(MoPED) system uses 'weather boxes', made by Weather Telematics of Ottawa, 
Canada, to gather precipitation and skylight data from sensors on the outer 
casing and temperature, pressure, relative humidity and ozone information 
from internal sensors.

The data is currently being used for forecasting, but it has the potential 
to provide local agencies and departments of transportation with 
information, such as whether a road needs to be salted because of ice. 
Curtis Marshall, the NWS manager for the $5 million project, said, "It's not 
practical to put a site every few meters down the road, but if you view the 
vehicle as the site, then it opens up a whole lot of opportunities." Paul 
Heppner, GST's project manager, noted, "While traveling down the highway, 
observations are taken every 1,000 feet (300m), which provide tremendous 
detail. These mobile platform observations supplement fixed site locations, 
such as airports and road weather sensors, which might be dozens of miles 
apart. The mobile platforms really serve as probes. They uncover cold 
pockets of air in valleys, or areas of fog and precipitation, which 
stationary radar often miss. Radar frequently overshoots the top of 
low-level precipitation."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44164629/ns/weather/t/big-brother-highways-nope-just-weather-boxes/



Guy R Day