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MSNBC.com - Mobile 'weather boxes' set to plug data gaps


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'Weather boxes' tested atop trucks to plug data gaps

Mobile 'probes' can report cold pockets, fog, rain that stationary sites miss

If you're rolling down the highway and see a big rig with a camera-like device attached to the cab, fear no evil: it's not Big Brother, but a mobile weather station.

For all the billions of dollars invested in weather forecasts and reports, highway-sized gaps in weather conditions still exist across the nation. Aiming to plug those, the National Weather Service is funding mobile stations atop hundreds of trucks, large vans and buses that instantly transmit the weather at ground level.

"It's not practical to put a site every few meters down the road," Curtis Marshall, the NWS manager for the $5 million project, tells msnbc.com. "But if you view the vehicle as the site then it opens up a whole lot of opportunities."

Since last March, "weather boxes" have been added to some 600 vehicles and are being tracked by Global Science & Technology, Inc., a private contractor running the test. By October, that should be up to some 1,500 vehicles, mostly from private trucking and package delivery fleets.

The data so far is being used for forecasting, but it has the potential to provide local jurisdictions with information like whether a road needs to be salted because of ice.

Article continued at link below:

http://www.msnbc.msn...629/ns/weather/

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