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  Road Weather Information System (RWIS) data

Road Weather Information System (RWIS) Data


Overview


Description

MADIS has been collecting data from state Department Of Transportation (DOT) providers since MADIS went live on July 1, 2001. The first DOT provider was the Kansas DOT in 2001, followed by the Iowa and Minnesota DOTs later that year. Because DOT providers have continued to participate, MADIS is now collecting data from 33 state DOTs currently all DOT observations are part of the MADIS Integrated Mesonet.

In FY2013 the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Road Weather Management Program (RWPM) contracted MADIS to port it's Clarus system into MADIS. In order for MADIS to fully support all the Environmental Sensor Stations (ESS) atmospheric, pavement and water level data, MADIS will expand it's data categories to include a Road Weather Information System (RWIS) database type.

Environmental Sensor Stations (ESS)

  • Atmospheric data include, but are not limited to:
    • Air temperature
    • Humidity
    • Visibility
    • Wind Speed
    • Wind Direction
    • Precipitation Type
    • Precipitation Rate
    • Cloud Cover
  • Pavement data include, but are not limited to:
    • Pavement Temperature
    • Pavement Freezing Point
    • Pavement Condition
    • Pavement Chemical Concentration
    • Subsurface Soil Temperatures
  • Water level data include, but are not limited to:
    • Stream
    • River
    • Lake levels near roads
    • Storm surge

The Clarus transition is currently at Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in MADIS. IOC is defined as the ability for MADIS to capture, disseminate, and display at least one observation from all of the defined Clarus RWIS observation types. At IOC, the RWIS data is still part of the MADIS Integrated Mesonet and the observational Quality Control (QC) is still a part of the MADIS Meteorological Surface Quality Control.

The Clarus transition into MADIS is scheduled to be completed by Quarter 3 Fiscal Year 2016 (Q3FY16) at which time there will be an RWIS data category in MADIS. This category will provide all observation types collected by Clarus provided by RWIS providers. The RWIS observations will go through MADIS QC as well as Clarus QC.

Geographic Coverage

United States CONUS, Alaska, and Canada.

Data Schedule

Data schedule is set by provider and ranges from every 5 minutes to once per day. The current and previous hour's data are processed every 5 minutes. Data are stored based on their observational time stamp in netcdf files that contain observations from the top of the hour until 59 minutes into the hour (e.g., the 0000 file covers 0000 - 0059).

Data that arrive after 2 hours following the time of the observation are processed in a "data recovery" mode, where once a day batch processing is performed to reprocess data that are 35 days, 7 days, and 1 day old. These data are available with all communications methods supported by MADIS except for ldm.

Volume

Typical daily volume for all MADIS datasets can be seen here.

Restrictions

No restrictions. All observations are publicly accessible.


Variable Details


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Last updated 22 March 2017