Jan/Feb 2009

In the light of reports that February's snow storms led to a shortage of salt for road gritting in some parts of Britain, a project under way at the Met Office looks promising. The organisation is working on a system that should enable road authorities to determine much more accurately which sections of road will need gritting. Result: less salt should be needed.

This is one of the benefits in prospect from a route-based weather forecasting system that the Met Office is trialling. It uses high-resolution modelling, and takes account of factors such as topography and the presence of buildings. By considering this kind of detail, it can predict variations in likely temperatures along the line of individual roads.

Such an approach requires very precise road mapping, and the Met Office is using Navteq street-level data supplied by MapMechanics. Unique numerical weather prediction models break the country down into 4km grid squares, and the Navteq data is used to determine which roads are affected within them.

The idea is to incorporate this data in the Met Office's existing OpenRoad weather forecasting system. According to road business manager Aileen Semple: 'Route trials this winter could represent a big step forward for the future of road weather forecasting.'