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Old July 26th 03, 03:58 AM posted to uk.sci.weather
Barry Kirley Barry Kirley is offline
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First recorded activity by Weather-Banter: Jul 2003
Posts: 13
Default Weather Stations By The Side Of Roads

There is one on the A34 near Newbury next to a layby...

On a windless calm day you can watch the anemometer spin like mad every time
a lorry races by!

GREAT!


Barry Kirley


"Paul Crabtree" (remove spam for valid
e-mail) wrote in message ...
Any chance some of this data being made available on the net

Paul


"Dorian Speakman" wrote in message
...
Hi Shirtie ,

The roadside stations are for highway maintenance, in respect of

checking
for icy conditions, as well for wind speed checks on important routes.

The
stations accompany sensors in the road tarmac, measuring road surface
temperatures, salt levels and moisture so that councils's highway

department
know whether to add salt on to the roads. They also have knowledge of

likely
conditions along the road having done "thermal mapping" surveys

previously,
so they should know of any frost pockets in the area. The aim is to use

just
enough road salt as is required, and to have an idea whether a road

might
need re-salting after rain etc.

Most counties have them in the UK. A lot of this work was pioneered by

Dr.
John Thornes of Birmingham University.

Dorian


"Shirtie" wrote in

message
...
Recently when driving around I've noticed what appear to be weather

stations
positioned by the side of roads. Trouble is you see one then you start
noticing them all over the place !!!

They are all on poles about 10 ft high, look to be solar powered, and

have
various instruments on. These are presumably for measuring wind

strength,
direction, temperature, etc. From what I can see they aren't the air

quality
measuring stations that are also cropping up.

I've noted them on the M4 (betwen Reading and Newbury) , M4 spur road

to
Heathrow, A22 Godstone, Surrey.

Hopefully someone will be able to enlighten me as to what they are

used
for
and who they belong to.

Thanks