Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0
Title:
Controlling Blowing and Drifting Snow with Snow Fences and Road Design
Abstract:
Snowdrifts can add significantly to the cost of winter maintenance, and also create serious safety hazards by causing loss of vehicle control, reducing sight distance on curves and at intersections, obscuring signs, promoting ice formation, reducing effective road width, and rendering safety barriers ineffective. Drifts contribute directly to pavement damage by blocking ditches, drains and culverts, and serving as a source of water infiltrating under pavement. The effects of blowing snow on road ice and reduced visibility are of even greater consequence. Blowing snow is the primary cause of icy roads in wind-exposed areas ? melting extracts diurnal solar radiant heat stored in the pavement and substratum, and the quantity of snow blowing across a road can be hundreds of times greater than direct snowfall. Studies on Interstate Highway 80 in Wyoming indicate that over the last 10 years, up to 25 percent of all crashes occur during blowing snow in areas without snow fences, compared to 11 percent in areas protected by fences. This report documents the effectiveness of properly engineered mitigation measures, describes in detail the processes involved in snow transport and deposition, provides specific guidelines for designing structural and living snow fences, and presents recommendations for designing drift-free roads.
Source(s):
Tabler and Associates, Prepared for the National Cooperative Highway Research program (NCHRP)
Date: 2003
Author:
Tabler
Keywords:
Crashes
Snow
Ice/Frost
Winter maintenance
Blowing/Drifting snow
Snow fence
Benefit/Cost
Wind
Visibility
PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®.
