Andrius Ružinskas, Henrikas Sivilevičius

Influence of winter weather changes on road pavement condition in Lithuania

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Abstract

Lithuania belongs to a special climatic zone, where winter usually lasts six months (from November till March). The air temperature is below zero for 3 – 4 months. Moreover, thaws are frequent when temperature ranges about zero. There is ice formation on the road, freezing rain and fog possibilities in these conditions. Trying to forecast these phenomenon, in 1999 there was developed Road Weather Information System (RWIS) in the country. There were established 102 meteorological stations on the roads in 14 years period and this number increases every year. These stations can fix the temperature of air, road surface and dew point, the speed of wind, road condition and visibility. These data helps to evaluate traffic conditions in the roads and also helps to establish all three levels of road maintenance in winter. However, trying to optimize the fleet of winter road maintenance, it‘s necessary to investigate weather changes influence on road pavement condition using RWIS data. These data analysis could help to estimate road condition in winter and would help to forecast road maintenance in the future. This article describes tendencies of weather changes and values of parameters in winter over the years which can be usefull improving road maintenance system in winter.

Keywords: RWIS; winter weather; winter road maintenance.