Colleen's Favorite Weather Forecast Resources

My company regularly sends field staff (actually all of our staff) out to monitor storms, with the goal to capture peak flows for a variety of different reasons - model calibration, water quality, flood warning programs, etc. We manage rain and stream gages for the following counties: Alameda, Zone 7, Contra Costa, San Mateo, San Francisquito Creek, Santa Clara Valley Water District, and Marin Municipal Water District. We also head out to observe some of the sites where we have completed habitat restoration or are in the process of so that we can inform our designs or implement adaptive management when necessary.

If you feel like tracking the rain, you can view some of our public gages here: https://www.balancehydro.com/online-gaging/

Here are some screenshots from today's rain.





Here are many of the tools we use to be prepared for storms:
  • Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes has a variety of tools, from atmospheric river forecasts to identifying snow elevation. Main page: https://cw3e.ucsd.edu/iwv-and-ivt-forecasts/
    • Atmospheric River Forecast https://cw3e.ucsd.edu/DSMaps/DS_ar_forecasts.html

  • NOAA National Weather Service Area Forecast Discussion - this is one of my favorite resources, the guy that used to do this forecast retired, but he had a great sense of humor that come through the forecast.
    • https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=MTR&issuedby=MTR&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1

  • For deterministic River Forecasts (focused on rivers, but informative) we use California Nevada River Forecast Center
    • https://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/?zoom=8&lat=35.824&lng=-121.433

  • Quantitative Precipitation Forecast
  • Daniel Swain meteorologist, very informative, great at explaining the various models, etc. he has recently begun live broadcasts on YouTube. https://weatherwest.com/


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