To improve the forecast and early warning ability for the low visibility along the expressway, the hourly observation data of 10 traffic meteorological stations along Shaanxi section of the Lian-Huo expressway and the hourly reanalysis data of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts are employed to analyze the distribution characteristics of low visibility and to explore the relationship of low visibility with other meteorological factors. The results show that along Shaanxi section of the Lian-Huo expressway, January has the most low visibility, while February has the least. During a day, the low visibility mostly happens from 00:00 to 10:00, and the low visibility of 0-50 m mainly occurs from 05:00 to 06:00. The low visibility duration is short with the majority of within 2 hours and the longest of 17 hours. The low visibility weathers occur frequently from Xingping to Changxing and Chencang section, where attention should be paid in daily traffic meteorological service. Accordingly to the analysis of the relationship between low visibility and other meteorological factors, the low visibility generally occurs under the conditions of air temperature from 0 to 5 ℃, relative humidity above 90%, wind speed less than 1.0 m·s-1 and northeast to east winds. The low visibility weather in summer and winter is mostly associated with precipitation, which usually occurs during or after the precipitation and is accompanied by weather systems always. Compared with the low visibility caused by radiation cooling, the low visibility associated with precipitation exhibits longer duration and the wider range. The low visibility weathers occur at different relative humilities in different seasons, which in winter, summer and autumn are high, while in spring are relatively low.
Based on the hail data from eleven ground meteorological observation stations in the eastern agricultural region of Qinghai Province from 1961 to 2020, the temporal and spatial distribution of hail days, hail diameter, duration and disaster risk characteristics were analyzed by using statistical methods. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The hail days in the agricultural area of eastern Qinghai Province decreased with climate tendency rate of 11.6 d·(10 a)-1 in the past 60 years, which passed the significance test of α=0.05, and after 1995, the anomaly of the total number of hail days changed from the positive to the negative. Hualong was the area with the largest number of hail days, and the number of hail days in Jianzha was the least. (2) Hail occurred mainly from May to September each year with seasonal differences. The diurnal variation of hail was obvious, and the peak occurred at 16:00 BST in the afternoon. (3) The number of hail days was positively correlated with altitude of stations and the correlation coefficient between them was as high as 0.97.(4) In the past 60 years, the hail processes with hail diameter less than 6 mm and the duration less than 9 min accounted for 58.33% and 73.55% of the total number of hail processes, respectively. (5) Xunhua was a low-risk area for hail, Hualong, Huangzhong and Huangyuan were medium-risk areas for hail, and Ledu was a high-risk or extremely high-risk area for hail, which was basically consistent with historical hail disasters.