In this paper we propose a snow sensor that detects presence of snow on road surface. Automatic threshold selection is one of the statistical image processing techniques and is effective way to divide image into some regions that have common properties. Using this method, we can detect snow from images containing pavement marking such as center line under various road conditions. Furthermore, we install the sensor on actual road and control a snow melting system. It is confirmed that the sensor works appropriately and reduces operating time of the snow melting system compared with the conventional snowfall sensor.

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In the cold climate and deep snow regions in the winter season of Japan, it has been advanced to utilize the snow as the cold energy source for air conditioning in summer. In this study, a system to extract the chilled air directly from the snow mound of several thousand ton through a horizontal borehole in it is proposed. Some troubles caused by mud in the snow melting water can be avoided by means of transferring heat from the melting water to the supply air. The thermal design for the heat exchange of this system is carried out by theoretical means and verified by the practical experiment. According to results of the experiment, it is proved sufficiently that the theoretical thermal design method predicts appropriate values of the system. The snow cooling system has been applied to a strawberry seedling greenhouse with 270m² as a practical experiment. And predicted values and experimental results are 9.90 kW as the cooling power gained from the snow mound using two blowers needed 0.8 kW totally.

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Recently, a large number of air-conditioning system that uses the snow as cold energy source (snow cooling system) has been increasing due to the environmental emerging that is represented by the global warming. While the reducing of the operational cost of this system is advanced, there is a demand for a simple cooling system that can be used in the necessary places where the snow mound is available to supply the cold energy source. Therefore, we have been starting the research and development of a movable package type of snow air-conditioning system since 2001.
Based on how to gain the cold energy from snow, the snow cooling system can be divided into two types: Air circulation type and Cold-water circulation type. In this paper, we report an experimental research and development of a cold-water circulation shower type of the snow cooling system.

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