Snow's coming (finally)

Winter started out right in the DC area in December, but disappeared entirely in January. It's back, forecasters tell us. Appropriately, this morning's Washington Post has a story on the job of weather forecasters. As with the advance of freedom in the world and the resilence of the U.S. economy's growth despite 9/11, Katrina and oil prices, an important and underappreciated story is the significantly improved performance of road weather information systems (RWIS). These aren't the forecasters in the Post story, but rather the data systems that tell roadway maintainers the pavement temperature so they know when to put down salt. For more on road weather, check out the Salt Institute website.