Abstract: A system and method for predicting future rail temperature for a rail of a railroad track, the system including a weather data source that provides current and forecasted meteorological data, a database that retrievably stores the meteorological data from the weather data source, and a processor that processes the meteorological data to calculate and output a future rail temperature for a future time based on the meteorological data, accounting for heat transfer characteristics of the rail. In one embodiment, the processor may be implemented to calculate the future rail temperature by determining a rate of change in rail temperature over time, and integrating the rate of change in rail temperature over time.