Wyoming has a certain geographic layout that causes snow to blow extremely hard and where our highways are placed, and the orientation of the highway causes a lot of problems with drifting.

Studies have shown that $1 invested in a snow fence can save over $1,000 in maintenance costs.

My name is Kathy Ahlenius.

Our purpose of coming out today is to look to see how our snow fences are filling.

We were told our fences are full, so we're coming out to see if that's actually the case.

When we look for a full snow fence, it looks like an airplane wing.

So if you were to look at an airplane wing from the side it starts out real small near the base of the fence, and then as it goes away from the fence, it grows in height and then it tails off at the very end.

If it's a full fence, then the fence is no longer doing its job.

There's no more snow that can be stored behind it.

We very rarely have seen a 100% full snow fence.

So the theory with snow fences is that the snow is blowing through and the wind pattern gets disturbed.

And so the snow particles fall out and then those particles will start to freeze together and the drifts will form.

The way it works is we place the snow fences a minimum of about 450 feet off of the roadway, and the snow will pile up behind it as high as the fence is built.

So if the fence is a ten foot fence, then the drift will be about ten foot high.

It can store 35 times the height of the snow in length, so if you have a ten foot fence, then that'll be 350ft out, depending on the width of the fence you have that many cubic feet of snow that's not being dispersed onto the roadway.

A lot of the times when we're designing, well try and put a fence on a ridge if we can, because that increases the actual storage capacity of the snow.

So the construction of a snow fence is it's very scientifically researched.

A lot of the groundbreaking research was done by Doctor Ronald Tabler.

And he did it right here in Wyoming.

The one fence that you typically see looks like a set of bleachers.

That's actually called a Wyoming snow fence.

A lot of studies have been done to find out exactly how snow can be disrupted, how wind patterns can be disrupted, and throughout all of that research, they found that a 50% porous fence disrupts any type of moving snow the best.

Traditionally, wood has been the material used because of its cheap cost.

We have a company that comes out and reclaims the wood, takes it off of the snow fences, and puts up brand new wood at no cost to the department or the taxpayers.

and what they're doing is essentially buying the wood from us, and they're turning it into a marketable product.

The company that gets the wood from the Wyoming snow fences sells it to the distributors, and they use it for decoration.

A lot of weathered building material seems to be kind of a hot commodity.

So what we have is a one of a kind truck.

It's instrumented with two, pavement sensor technologies.

We have sensors on the vehicle that tell us how slick the road is.

And then we also have a video camera that is videotaping the road as we drive.

So we have a hand-held anemometer that we can measure the wind speed.

We have these permanent weather stations, they're removable, but we put them out every two years at a time.

So when, when we want to, make sure that those are spot on, we can always just kind of verify it with this one and make sure all the data matches everything.

So there you go.

What we do is we set out anemometers.

A lot of weather stations find out exactly where the prevailing winds are coming from, not necessarily storm direction winds.

Some of the problems that we have with some of the snow fences is they were designed for a certain wind direction, and some years we have different wind directions, and they're not quite as effective as when they were designed.

A lot of the winds that we get out of Wyoming are from the northwest.

We do have a lot of storms that come in from the south, and there's really not much we can do about that.

Yeah, we're filling in those fences.

That wind directions coming from both sides.

You see a lot of the fences at an angle to the road.

Now we're coming up to Creston Junction.

Now once we cross over, you'll see a lot of our snow fences run parallel to the road, and we can build fences parallel to the road, but typically they're longer.

Sometimes we can do it and sometimes we cant.

It just depends on landowners.

There's only so much that the department itself can do.

A lot of it is dependent upon landowners and cooperation, and we have a great working relationship with a lot of landowners around this great state.

We have easements.

We can go in, we get egress into their property so we can work on and maintain the snow fences.

When we propose them, especially with a lot of the cattle ranchers throughout Wyoming, I try to explain them it's like a babysitter for your cattle.

It's a wind block.

They always have water there that comes off of the melt.

You can channel it down into a stock pond.

The grass underneath it is so lush and green, full of nutrients because it's properly watered.

And then on top of that, we'll plant trees if the funds are there and it increases their property value.

The department also works with the local conservation district and the Forestry Division to put up living snow fence, and that takes typically 10 to 20 years to become fully mature.

They'll go out, they'll get soil samples, find out exactly what kind of tree or shrub can survive in that type of climate, and what type of soil they need, and then they'll plant the trees and they act just like a wind barrier.

For the most part, the junipers and the caraganas are 50% porous.

And they work just as well as a wooden snow fence.

And obviously, the beautification to the state is paramount.

A lot of snow is being held back by the snow fences and its snow we're not plowing.

And I don't think people realize that we're trying to keep them safe on the road.

We're trying to make sure that they can get to where they're going.

That's our intent.

You invest one dollar into a snow fence, you dont have to spend a thousand dollars on maintenance costs for the roadway, plowing the same drift off over and over again, using the fuel for the vehicles, the wear and tear on the vehicles, and honestly, the wear and tear on the personnel.

Fences that we do have in the problem areas are extremely beneficial.

And we try and make sure that we place our snow fences where they need to be.