3 ms·
Kind of a fun study, enabled by the presence of so much public-domain data from CA DWR. One piece that's missing from this analysis is upstream precipitation.
by mturmon 10y ago
Kind of a fun study, enabled by the presence of so much public-domain data from CA DWR.
One piece that's missing from this analysis is upstream precipitation. You are sensing precip at Oroville itself, but water in the dam comes from everywhere upstream (3600 square miles according to [1]). As well as (potentially) snowmelt.
People doing forecasting of reservoir levels will be integrating distributed precipitation information, snowpack, and temperature, with a soil runoff and routing model to get predictions.
[1]: http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/profile?s=ORO&type=dam http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/profile?s=ORO&type=dam
- stuckagain 10y agoIndeed. If we want to leave the analysis to professionals we would look at the CDEC river guidance for the Feather above the dam. Here it is. http://cdec.water.ca.gov/guidance_plots/MFP_gp.html http://cdec.water.ca.gov/guidance_plots/MFP_gp.html As you see the forecast flow is only about one third of that experienced on Friday past.
- mturmon 10y agoThanks for locating that. I work with people who do retrospective runoff and streamflow modeling (using past measurements to make better models), but not the predictive stuff in the graphs you linked.
- stuckagain 10y agoNOAA has nationwide river sensor and guidance data if you are interested in a river near you. https://water.weather.gov/ahps/forecasts.php https://water.weather.gov/ahps/forecasts.php