1. WISKI Open Water and Ice Bernard Trevor, M.Eng. P.Eng. River Forecast Section Environment and Sustainable Resource Development WISKI ESRD Users Conference 10 March 2015

2. Outline Open water season Data Daily Scans Forecasting Tools Ice season Freeze-up Breakup Gauge height versus discharge relationship Effects on gauge operation 2

3. WISKI – Time Series Data Generally we are looking at the following time series O. = original data (direct form Collect or logger input, not editable) V. = validated data (where WISKI validators / correctors are applied) P. = production data (where data can be manually edited) C. = computed data (e.g., corrected water levels; flows; etc.) A. = aggregated data (i.e., hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) S. = statistics (e.g., percentiles, historical means, percent normal, etc.) F. = model flow results AND flows converted to water level (flows are written into database by the model, database computes water levels) X. = water level thresholds Techs Forecaster General Forecaster Events

4. Forecasting Daily Duties Daily Scan – Reports WISKI Reports

5. Forecasting Daily Duties Daily Scan – Dashboard

6. Forecasting Models Forecast 146 locations in the province Pull 15 min data from WISKI Run on an hourly time step Route inflow through reservoirs Write flow back into WISKI to back compute field water levels (removes gauge corrections)

7. Forecasting Water Supply Tools Snow Survey and Ranking Reports Snow/Precip Summary for Water Supply Regression Models

8. Flood Notification Update Flood Frequency Work and Advanced Graphing Using advanced graphing to pull Annual Max Daily Q daily from A. DayMean-NRT as WSC data set on datamart not complete Using Flood Frequency analysis of extreme events to generate freq analysis for ops room use only

9. WISKI Flood Notification Update SKED and Rating Curves Updating FNM rating curve tables Assessing the changing capacity of the rivers over time (ie Oldman at Lethbridge is gradually losing capacity)

10. Ice Season Alberta is a cold climate Edmonton Average <0°CNov. to Mar. Daily Minimum <0°COct. to Apr. Recorded Minimum <0°CAll months 10

11. Ice Season Varies by North to south Mountains to prairies Higher to lower elevations Smaller stream to larger streams Ice affects gauge height Ice affects equipment Causes flooding 11

12. Ice Season 12 Ice season

13. Ice Season 13 Freeze-upBreak up

14. Ice Cover Progression 14

15. Alarms 15

16. Alarms 16 Daily Status Email for 172 ice, open water and rainfall intensity alarms Alarms goto duty phones via duty emails

17. Remote Camera 17

18. Gauge Height vs. Discharge Relationship Ice affects gauge height Discharge relationship not valid with ice Ice changes Hydraulic smoothing Ice production takes water out (into storage) Ice melting releases water (out of storage) 18

19. Gauge Height vs. Discharge Relationship 19

20. Gauge Operation Ice affects equipment Orifice blockages Orifice movements Leaks 20

21. Gauge Operation - Blockage 21

22. Gauge Operation – Orifice movement 22

23. Gauge Operation – Temperature effects, Leaks 23