The visibility of the human eye in blowing snow with the effect of suspended snow particles’ afterimages

Abstract

Afterimages of snow particles in blowing snow may cause lower visibility of the human eye compared to images captured by a digital video camera. However, the impact of the afterimage of snow particles on the visibility of the human eye in blowing snow has not been investigated quantitatively. Here we examined visibility taking the effect of afterimages of snow particles on the human eye into consideration. By considering the duration range of afterimages, and changing the windspeed while the snow density remains constant, our numerical model of visibility for the visual duration range of 0.12 to 0.04 s could accurately explain the visibility of the human eye previously observed in blowing snow.