Hurricane Havoc: Mapping the Mayhem with NOAA's National Water Model

On August 27, 2011 Hurricane Irene made landfall along the coast of North Carolina. Bringing rain totals of 20+ inches to many parts of the East Coast of the U.S. and wind speeds over 100mph, this storm made its way up the East Coast over the next 3 days leaving a trail of devastated communities. The widespread flooding across the Northeast and, in particular, swaths of New York and Vermont that resulted from this storm led to loss of life and extensive damage to infrastructure. With Hurricane Irene as a case study, this work demonstrates the versatility of NOAA’s new National Water Model (NWM) as tool for understanding hydrologic hazards before, during, and after events. As a significant step forward to transform NOAA’s water prediction services and provide forecast streamflow guidance for underserved locations, NOAA implemented Version 1.0 of the NWM in August 2016. A continent-scale water resources model, the NWM is an evolution of the WRF-Hydro architecture developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and its international collaborator community. Using Hurricane Irene as an example, this poster will present a series of post-processed products, derived from NWM output, that are currently being developed at NOAA’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, AL.