Overview of the NIDIS Weekly Climate, Water and Drought Assessment NIDIS Upper Colorado River Basin Pilot Nolan Doesken and Becky Smith

CCC Staff working on NIDIS UCRB Pilot and Weekly Webinars Nolan Doesken—The Head Honcho! Wendy Ryan—in charge of organizing webinars Becky Smith—in charge of writing summaries Zach Schwalbe and Morgan Phillips— content contributors Noah Newman—contact point during webinar briefings Henry Reges—email distributor

Testing began in February 2010

About the weekly briefings Every Tuesday morning at 10:00am Collaboration—individuals have their own “portion” to inform people about Wendy brings all pieces together in one presentation About 20 minutes to bring everyone up- to-date on the “state” of the climate and water of the UCRB Discussion and consensus decision at end

Who is involved? Webinar content contributors Colorado Climate Center Wyoming State Climate Office USGS NOAA/National Weather Service offices CBRFC Discussion contributors/attendees NCWCD, Denver Water, Colorado River District Upper basin municipal water providers USDA/NRCS Federal land managers (BLM, USFS) Drought Monitor authors Ski resorts River commissioners Local government General public

Why are these so important? People stay well informed Anyone can be involved in the decision-making process We all have the opportunity to learn from each other Decisions are made at the local level, then sent to the USDM author Tailored to fit the purposes of many, whether they want to know about the current state, or are interested in the USDM maps Drought Early Warning—constant monitoring, with no surprises

Precipitation and Snowpack Analysis of precipitation Last week Last month Since October 1 Analysis of snowpack One-week changes in percent of average Percentile rankings Analog to previous wet/dry years

Streamflow Coordination with USGS Current conditions across the basin Site specific analysis Comparison to same date over the last 10 years Streamflow forecast update from CBRFC

Water Supply and Demand Time series of reservoir levels Current levels compared to historic levels Temperatures Soil moisture How to quantify water demand… still a work in progress

Precipitation Forecast Short term precipitation forecasts Will precip help improve some dry areas? Will lack of precip cause deterioration? Long term forecasts: prevailing patterns, what’s in store for the season

DROUGHT AND WATER DISCUSSION Current U.S. Drought Monitor map for the UCRB. Discuss which areas where drought should be introduced or taken out.

Contributions to the USDM When changes to the map are discussed several things have happened Drought monitor authors have not been on call. We redraw lines on powerpoint, save and send to author. Author has been on the call, taken suggestions and added to next draft. Author has taken control of webinar, and redrawn lines, live, with our input.

Weekly Summaries After the webinars, a summary of all the information is distributed These summaries are also sent weekly, even “out of season” when there are fewer webinars climate.colostate.edu – links on left hand side to find past webinars, archived summaries, and register for upcoming webinars. Next webinar Tuesday, August 31st

Using the Drought Portal to Improve the NIDIS UCRB Weekly Summary www.drought.gov

How we currently get data Precip maps—Wendy manually creates maps in GIS using COOP, Snotel, CoCoRaHS, and Coagmet data Snotel maps—Wendy grabs data from different pages on the NRCS site Reservoir data—Becky grabs data from USBR, NRCS, and receives data via email

Current uses on the portal Precip products Current USDM map VegDRI map Different boundaries useful—states, counties, HUCs, labels of each

How can the drought portal help? Need more data for precip products Need more choices for precip products Wide range of time periods User defined time periods Actual and percent of normal for all Inclusion of percentile rankings Inclusion of soil moisture, streamflow, reservoir data (one stop for everything) Draw boundary line for UCRB Location of reservoirs Saved start-up page for each user (currently starts with state lines and powerplants)

Thank You!