0. NOAA/NWS Water Supply Web Page
Jay P. Breidenbach
Sr. Hydrologist
NOAA /National Weather Service
Boise, Idaho

1. NOAA/NWS Water Supply Web Page
New design will be ready in December
New interactive forecast and research tools
Partnerships and feedback
The goal of this talk is not to look at a year in review or to look at the 2009 water year…but to show you some of the progress that we have made on the western water supply web page, so that you can follow the forecasts and updates through the year.
There is a new design of the web page that will be ready in December with the first Water Supply Forecasts and I would like to show you what these enhancements will look like.
The new page as new interactive forecast and research tools that are designed to let you ask the question and get answers from the data. I’ll show you some of this capability.
Finally…I would like to close by getting some feedback from you and discussing the possibility of partnering on the display of additional forecast information on the web page.

2. Long Range Seasonal River Volume Forecasts
Statistical Water Supply
Regression techniques
168 forecast locations
Coordinated forecasts with NRCS
Ensemble Stream Flow Prediction (ESP)
Uses very long runs of NWS River Forecast System (NWSRFS)
Future Temperature and Precipitation is unknown beyond ~ 10 days
Assume that what happened in the past represents the range of what could happen in the future on any given year and use historical temperature and precipitation observations as future input into hydrology model.
Generate output in probabilistic format
I thought Steve did a great job reviewing the water supply products that NWFC produces. They can be broken into two categories. Statistical and Ensemble Techniques. The Statistical Water Supply forecast is still the one that is coordinated with the NRCs and becomes the official government forecast of water supply. The ESP is a powerful forecasting technique in that we can generate output in probabilistic format to begin addressing some of the uncertainties in water supply forecasting.

3.
This is what the current design of the web page looks like. It is an attempt integrate water supply forecasts from all RFCs into a single view. Here individual basins are color coded relative to normal values. This is a good briefing tool…similar to the U.S drought monitor, but some of the other analysis tools and displays are limited.

4.
This is what the main interface will look like when the new web page is unveiled in December. It will be located at the same web locations, but will have a different look and feel. The first thing that you will notice is that forecasts are displayed as individual points rather than coloring and entire basin.

6. Seasonal Evolution

7. Comparison with Similar Years

10. Monthly Ensemble Means and Distributions

11. Forcing with specific year or ENSO condition.

12. Cumulative Excedence Probability

16. 50 year stream flow simulations
Shift in average annual hydrograph

18. Feedback What types of decisions do you need to make?
What types of tools do you need to help make those decisions?
Developing partnerships to display other types and sources of forecasts.