Preliminary plans for a US Water Cycle Initiative started over five years ago through discussions within the hydroclimate community. Subsequently, the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) formed a committee chaired by Professor George Hornberger, which produced the report titled, A Plan for a New Science Initiative on the Global Water Cycle (USGCRP, May 2001). Since then, a number of agencies - including NASA, NOAA, DOE and NSF - have been developing their own particular plans for the water cycle research program. At the same time, the World Climate Research Programme's Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (WCRP-GEWEX) commenced in the early 1990s, and began planning the activities for its Phase II objectives. During Phase I of GEWEX, a number of Continental-Scale Experiments (CSE) were established. The GEWEX Continental-scale International Project (GCIP) was the first CSE, based in the US Mississippi basin. GCIP was successful in making significant progress in observations, process studies and modeling toward closing the water cycle and energy budget over the Mississippi basin. The GEWEX Americas Prediction Project (GAPP: see http://www.ogp.noaa.gov/mpe/gapp/gapp/index.htm) provides a good example of CSE activities. The GAPP program aims to make monthly to seasonal predictions of the hydrological cycle and to use these improved predictions for better water resources management. GAPP is a follow-on that extended GCIP to include the western US. GEWEX Phase II objectives include The Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP: see http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ceop/index.html), The Global Land-Atmosphere System Study (GLASS: see http://hydro.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/GLASS/), and a number of other sub-programmes and activities. This presentation will highlight the latest results for GEWEX Phase I, and will emphasize the synergistic relation between the Water Cycle Initiative and the elements of GEWEX Phase II.