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"Road Ice Warning" initiative
Based on the data collected during the winter seasons between 2008 and 2010, coupled with on-site footage and observations from road ice events since 2004, I'm recommending that both the National Weather Service and media outlets give more urgent and intensive coverage and attention to the road ice threat. Specifically, I'm urging the introduction of a NWS warning product for the road ice hazard ("Road Ice Warning" or similar) and that it be given the same priority status as other warning products issued by the NWS (such as high wind warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood warnings and tornado warnings). This initiative is in no way meant to indict or criticize the NWS. The purpose is to re-evaluate current practice and discuss potential improvements, much in the same spirit that changing hail size criteria for severe thunderstorm warnings was undertaken.
Saving Lives: Three 'links' in the warning process chain
The goals of this initiative involve three "links" in the 'chain of communication' between the NWS and the public:
- Link #1: National Weather Service warnings: The NWS is the fully equipped, well qualified and widely recognized official source for weather hazard information in the USA.
- Link #2: Media and other communication outlets: Radio, television, NOAA All-Hazards Radio and internet-based outlets are the primary vehicles that communicate NWS warning information to the public. Other modern means of communication available include highway message signs, cell phones, e-mail, and social networking sites.
- Link #3: Public education and awareness: The public must be educated to recognize weather-related threats and on how they should respond to warning messages they receive.
Improving road ice safety involves all three of these "links" in the chain. It is the purpose of this web site to contribute to "Link #3", but links #1 and #2 are also essential in completing any effective campaign to save lives. The process starts with Link #1 (the 'official entity' of the NWS declaring the hazard), followed by Link #2 (communicating the hazard appropriately), and finally ends with Link #3 (an educated and aware public responding to the warnings).
Road Icing: A significant threat to life and property
Consider the following facts:
- Road icing from light snow, freezing rain (ZR) and freezing drizzle (FZDZ) is a high-impact weather phenomena that directly poses a significant threat to both life and property.
- More people are killed and injured in motor vehicle crashes caused by SN, ZR and FZDZ than in any other form of severe weather.
- Death and injury rates per hour/per mile traveled during SN, ZR and FZDZ are higher than in any other form of severe weather and possibly higher than in any other weather condition period.
- Currently, SN, ZR and FZDZ events that fall below warning criteria (which are the vast majority of events) are covered only by Freezing Rain Advisories, Winter Weather Advisories and Special Weather Statements - products that do not convey a sense of urgency and a threat to life and property.
- Under current practice, minor SN, ZR and FZDZ events that frequently cause fatal crashes often do not meet the criteria for NWS advisories.
- Unlike heavy snow, road icing from light snow, ZR and FZDZ is not visually apparent to drivers, and as a result:
- Drivers do not have a chance to adjust their speeds before encountering the hazard
- Crashes occur at much higher speeds, resulting in higher impact forces, greater vehicle damage, more serious injuries and high fatality rates.
- The NWS and other NOAA offices (including the TPC, SPC) currently issue watch, advisory and warning products for high winds, floods, river floods, flash floods, hard freezes, frost, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, elevated fire weather conditions, gales, maritime storms, hurricanes, tropical storms, ice storms, blizzards and winter storms - all phenomena which have much lower or even negligible fatality or injury rates (frosts and hard freezes for example) when compared with ZR/FZDZ.
- The NWS is the agency best equipped and authorized to forecast for and monitor winter weather, as well as issue official warning products for public release.
Based on these facts, I urge NOAA/NWS to consider these suggestions:
- Implement a Road Ice Warning product for snow, freezing rain (ZR), freezing drizzle (FZDZ) and heavy freezing fog (FZFG). Criteria for the warning product should be any light snow, ZR, FZDZ, or FZFG imminent or in progress that is capable of creating a life-threatening road ice hazard (regardless of the expected total precipitation amounts).
- Expand and emphasize HPC freezing rain outlooks - NOAA's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center currently issues outlooks for freezing rain twice a day for the continental US (similar to the SPC convective outlooks - Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). However, the outlooks only denote areas that are at risk from receiving a quarter of an inch or more of ice. The outlooks are more geared at alerting for ice storm potential, not road ice. A new criteria level needs to be introduced to cover any area that is at risk for receiving light freezing precipitation capable of creating a road ice hazard.
- More aggressive awareness campaigns - Awareness campaigns are already in effect for lightning, tornadoes, floods, severe weather and winter weather. I recommend that road ice be given its own emphasis separate from the winter weather umbrella. I believe that the public needs to develop the same respect for road ice as they do tornadoes and hurricanes, to the point of recognizing the warning signs and chainging their decision making process when the hazard threatens.
Suggested Protocol/Criteria/Wording for Road Icing
The Freezing Rain Advisory and Winter Weather Advisory products are good models for a Road Ice Warning product, as they are concerned with the travel hazard almost (if not entirely) exclusively. Therefore, changes to the wording and titling of this product could easily be employed for communicating to the public the level of risk.
Therefore, this proposal suggests replacing all Freezing Rain Advisories, Winter Weather Advisories and snow/ice-related Special Weather Statements (SPS) with Road Ice Warnings. As Freezing Rain Advisories and Winter Weather Advisories are primarily travel-related products, they should be combined in an all-inclusive Road Ice Warning product that effectively communicates the hazard. The combination of the products into one should simplify warning procedures, as criteria for a Road Ice Warning would be identical to any condition that would trigger a Freezing Rain Advisory, Winter Weather Advisory or a snow/ice-related Special Weather Statement.
Road Ice Warnings should not need to be issued for ice accretions meeting Ice Storm Warning criteria nor snow events meeting Winter Storm Warning or Blizzard Warning criteria, both of the latter which should supercede/replace the Road Ice Warning. However, the same wording relating the road ice hazard should be included in all Ice Storm Warning, Winter Storm Warning and Blizzard Warning products.
The following is a conceptual example of the new warning product:
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHARLESTON HAS ISSUED A ROAD ICE WARNING FOR THE FOLLOWING COUNTIES IN WEST VIRGINIA:
KANAWHA... PUTNAM... CABELL... WAYNE... JACKSON... MASON... CLAY... ROANE... LINCOLN... BOONE
EFFECTIVE UNTIL 12:00PM EST SATURDAY.
A ROAD ICE WARNING MEANS THAT FREEZING PRECIPITATION OR LIGHT SNOW WILL CREATE A DEADLY COATING OF ICE ON AREA ROADS. THIS IS A POTENTIALLY LIFE-THREATENING SITUATION FOR MOTORISTS. ROAD ICE FREQUENTLY CAUSES SERIOUS AND FATAL MOTOR VEHICLE CRASHES. REMEMBER THAT ICE OFTEN IS INVISIBLE AND CANNOT BE VISUALLY DISTINGUISHED FROM WET PAVEMENT. BRIDGES AND OVERPASSES ARE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO DEVELOPING ICY PATCHES. FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE AND ALL-WHEEL DRIVE VEHICLES ARE NOT IMMUNE TO LOSING CONTROL ON ICE. TRAVEL IS EXTREMELY DISCOURAGED - IF YOU MUST TRAVEL, PROCEED SLOWLY AND WITH EXTREME CAUTION.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will a road ice warning product add additional expense and burden to the duties of the NWS?
The suggested changes involve simply rewording, renaming and reclassifying existing products that are already handled by the NWS. For instance, this article recommends issuing a "Road Ice Warning" in instances where a road ice-related SPS or WWA would normally be used. The goal is to better communicate the degree of threat to life and property to media and to the public, by using stronger wording typically reserved for other life-threatening weather hazards.
Currently warned weather hazards threaten people at home, who aren't paying attention. By contrast, aren't drivers voluntarily placing themselves at risk by operating a motor vehicle?
To answer this, one only needs to ask if driving a vehicle is truly a voluntary act for most people. The daily commuter has no choice but to use his car to get to work every day. If the cupboards are running low, it's a car that's going to make possible the trip to the store and back. Driving a vehicle is just as much a part of the daily routine for people as being at home, and the fact that a weather hazard threatens them while in their car should not make it any less of a public safety burden than a tornado bearing down on a house.
A disparity exists regarding how road icing is communicated versus other weather hazards. A severe thunderstorm event, for example, may result in dozens of warnings and intensive media coverage (in the name of protecting life and property). All of this is in spite of the fact that phenomena in a severe thunderstorm that prompts the warning (large hail or high winds) rarely causes loss of life.
Nonetheless, current practice places the burden of predicting and identifying road ice hazards squarely on drivers - including even ice from freezing rain, which is not visually identifiable.
Consider a severe thunderstorm (or frost, or river floods, etc) versus road ice created by freezing precipitation. Road ice should be handled in an identical fashion to other deadly weather hazards that threaten the public.
Aren't icy roads a visually obvious hazard that drivers have no excuse ignoring?
A white, snowpacked road is not the picture of the typical high-fatality road icing hazard. Indeed, accident rates are lower when roads are completely covered in snow. In contrast, some of the worst icy road accident outbreaks occur with freezing precipitation (ZR and FZDZ), which creates road ice that is not visually distinguishable from wet roads. Traffic can pack/refreeze icing from light snow to create a very slick yet more subtle-appearing layer of ice. Furthermore, icing of these types tends to be isolated and patchy, resulting in a hazard that a driver may not encounter until they are several miles into their journey. This is especially true of bridge icing, which a driver may not encounter after many miles of driving on wet or dry pavement.
Aren't all road ice crashes caused by careless drivers?
While it is true that many accidents on icy roads are the result of drivers not exercising due care in the face of a visually apparent hazard, the actual data shows that many cannot be classified as such. Many accidents result from drivers who were not operating their vehicles in a careless manner, but had no advance warning of an icing hazard being present before they encountered it. This is especially true for bridge icing, which will have few visual indicators until the driver is about to cross the bridge. There is also currently not a high level of awareness of the degree of the road ice threat to life and property, which influences driver response. It is viewed as, and often portrayed as by official sources and the media, a 'travel nusiance' that is simply an inconvenience for the motorist.
Aren't icy roads a Department of Highways (DOT) issue and not an NWS problem?
DOTs are primarily concerned with mitigating the road ice hazard by application of de-icing materials to roadways. They are not equipped nor trained to forecast for weather conditions that could produce road icing, and they have limited means to communicate any warnings to the public.
Furthermore, the fact that the National Weather Service issues products/advisories that are exclusively concerned with road icing (Freezing Rain Advisories, Winter Weather Advisories, snow/ice SPSs) demonstrates that the NWS has indeed accepted a responsibility to forecast for and advise the public of this hazard.
Doesn't road ice happen too often? Won't forecasters be overwhelmed and the public grow accustomed to the warnings?
This article suggests that warnings need only to be issued for sub-freezing light snow or freezing precipitation imminent or in progress. Warnings are not necessary (but still recommended) for the following:
- Heavy snow: Snow covering a road is visually apparent to drivers. It is easily identified, giving drivers the opportunity to adjust their speeds. Fatality and accident rates on snow-covered roads are much lower than those with ZR/FZDZ.
- Flash freezing - Evidence suggests that 'flash freezing' (dampness on roads from residual rainwater freezing after a rapid temperature fall) is an infrequent event and therefore negligible. No fatalities have been recorded this year due to the phenomenon.
Light snow, ZR and/or FZDZ occurs in any given NWS county warning area (CWA) typically no more than once or twice a week during the winter season, and therefore would only require very infrequent activation. Compare that with the thousands of severe thunderstorm warnings that are issued nationwide every year (for a much less deadly weather phenomena), and it is apparent that the concerns about an 'overload' of warnings are unfounded.
Isn't ice on roadways an ancillary (secondary) cause of crashes due to driver error?
Road ice from freezing precipitation is not an ancillary cause of crashes, it is the sole factor in a large percentage of accidents during light snow and freezing precipitation. With freezing precipitation, in addition to being invisible to motorists, this type of ice physically separates the vehicle tires from the road, causing loss of control without any abnormal behavior from the driver. The result of a vehicle encountering black ice is no different than if it had been blown off the road by a tornado, in that both are 100 percent a result of external weather-related forces that are of no fault of the driver.
To be sure, some drivers are to blame for crashes by not paying attention to conditions nor heeding visual warnings - but many are not, and it's not fair to blame all drivers for a weather hazard they cannot see before it is too late.
Isn't road icing not a weather-related hazard, as it is a result of precipitation after it has reached the ground?
Flash flooding is also a result of precipitation after it has reached the ground. Yet flooding is and always has been considered a weather-related hazard. Snow, freezing rain, freezing drizzle, freezing fog, sleet, and other winter weather events and their impacts are unquestionably weather-related.
Won't people just not pay attention to the warnings?
Many people do not currently pay attention to the other warning products that the NWS issues, but many do. Severe thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings and even freeze warnings were drafted, approved and implemented because it was found they could make a difference - there is no reason that another (greater) hazard should be treated differently.
Aren't the current advisories sufficient?
The current advisories do not convey a sense of urgency nor the significance of the threat to life and property (in the same way tornado, flood or severe thunderstorm warnings do). Minor ZR/FZDZ events that fall below advisory criteria are still capable of creating deadly road ice conditions.
Public attitude regarding, and response to, the road ice hazard is not on par with other less-deadly weather hazards (such as tornadoes and severe thunderstorms) due to the lack of emphasis on the risk to life and property conveyed by official sources and media outlets.
Shouldn't efforts be directed at driver awareness?
Indeed, driver awareness is part of the goal of this web site. But proper awareness begins with official sources adequately addressing the level of risk and issuing appropriate warnings. Drivers should not be expected to bear the full burden of assessing and identifying the ZR/FZDZ hazard any more than a homeowner should be expected to assess and identify an approaching tornado or severe thunderstorm.
Public education of the hazards is important, but without an official acknowledgement of the level of risk by authorities and media outlets, driver complacency and lack of awareness cannot be expected to improve.
Do you think more research is needed before implementing changes?
The fatality and accident statistics during ZR and FZDZ events should be evidence enough that action needs to be taken. The 'research' has already been done to justify every other warning product that is currently issued, in terms of the effectiveness of alerting the public to a weather hazard. If it was decided that issuing a severe thunderstorm warning, for example, would make a difference to public awareness and safety, then this same logic must be applied to the road ice hazard. No further research is necessary.
 
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