Conference Web Site Contact:   Rob Cifelli

HMT Hosts Special Session on Precipitation Monitoring and Forecast Activities in the San Francisco Bay Area

Session Description: NOAA's Hydrometorological Tested has demonstrated that deployment of advanced gap-filling radars and other precipitation sensors, along with high resolution numerical weather modeling can improve current capabilities for tracking and forecasting heavy precipitation events coming off the Pacific and across steep terrain. This session will feature a sequence of presentations on HMT activities for an observing network design and deployment, atmospheric rivers, quantitative precipitation estimation, distributed hydrologic modeling and water management applications.

Papers presented in the oral session include:

• Evaluation of Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) in Complex Terrain (R. Cifelli et al.)
• Water Management Applications of High Resolution Precipitation Products (L. Johnson et al.)
• A New California Observing Network Designed to Improve Detection and Monitoring of Extreme Weather Events (A. White et al.)
• Estimating Basin Drainage Characteristics Using Spatially and Temporally Limited Soil Moisture Observations (R. Zamora et al.)
• Role of Atmospheric Rivers in Flood and Water Supply Forecasting (D. Reynolds et al.)

In addition, the poster session on Wednesday afternoon included an HMT presentation: Distributed Hydrological Modeling Using High Resolution Precipitation Products (C. Hsu et al.), and Thursday morning's oral session featured another paper of HMT-related research on atmospheric rivers: Atmospheric Rivers, Levees and Floodplain Ecology in the Bay-Delta System (M. Dettinger et al.).