Hydrologic Ensemble Forecast at the Russian River Watershed

West- Weather Research and Forecasting (West-WRF) model, is an ongoing effort at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) to forecast better atmospheric rivers that make landfall in North California. This regional weather prediction system was tailored to western U.S. weather and hydrological extremes, including heavy rainfall and extended dry periods. In this study, we would like to investigate the uncertainty of forecast precipitation and corresponding runoff and soil moisture in the Russian River watershed in North California. We employ Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrological Analysis (GSSHA) model, to estimate the runoff using the West-WRF ensemble forecast precipitation. The analysis has been conducted for the period of the Oroville dam crisis (early February 2017) and the results are evaluated with respect to the observation data and deterministic forecast to understand the order of uncertainty.