Road Weather Management Program
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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

Avalanche Hazard Reduction on US-89/191 with Snow Sails

Abstract:

Snow sails are a form of passive avalanche-starting zone defense. A deployment of snow sails will disrupt the snowpack in an avalanche-starting zone and inhibit the formation of coherent, continuous avalanche wind-slabs. This paper describes an avalanche project to assess, test, and install an operational deployment of approximately 50 snow sails in the avalanche-starting zone as a means of cost-effectively reducing the avalanche hazard, due primarily to wind-slab avalanching, for motorists and Wyoming Department of Transportation maintainers on US-89/191. After 4 years of pilot-phase trials and technology demonstrations, a complement of 60 snow sails was fabricated, transported, and installed during the autumn of 2002. Unlike other forms of constructed, passive avalanche-starting zone defense facilities, snow sails may be removed annually in the spring and reinstalled in the autumn. This minimizes their year-round visual impact. The avalanche snow-sail deployment has undergone a requisite U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service/National Environmental Policy Act Environmental Assessment. The finding was one of no significant impact.

Source(s):

6th International Symposium on Snow Removal and Ice Control Technology, Transportation Research Circular, No. E-C063

https://trid.trb.org/view/702055

Date: 2004

Author:

Decker, Rice, Wells, Yount

Keywords:


Avalanche
Snow fence
Wind

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