The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

State News

February 7, 2010

High-tech upgrades in works on U.S. 460

GREEN VALLEY — Motorists traveling along U.S. 460 near Crumpecker Hill may soon see construction crews installing a 30-foot weather station near the primary roadway.

Bids will be opened Tuesday on a new weather monitoring station that will feed real-time road condition data to the West Virginia Division of Highways and local emergency officials. The high-tech roadway weather tower will include embedded sensors in the roadway capable of detecting black ice before it actually forms.

“With a roadway weather information system, basically it is a system that captures every bit of meteorological data it can at one site,” said Bruce Kenny III, an information technology systems coordinator and systems management engineer with the West Virginia Division of Highways in Charleston. “More than that, we have embedded sensors in the roadway that can give us the surface temperature, roadway temperatures, etc. It will tell you the percentage of salt solution on the road, and also predicts black ice conditions.”

Kenny said a dynamic messaging sign system also will be erected on Interstate 77 near Bluefield where emergency messages can be displayed to motorists, along with other data like Amber Alerts. A second weather station also will be erected in McDowell County. Kenny said the site of the McDowell County weather station is still to be determined.

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