Duplication of effort is eliminated and a single message reaches the emergency managers and the public. These forecasts allow reservoir operators to anticipate regulation changes required by very wet or very dry weather. Reservoir forecasts are produced in the flood forecast modeling process and are updated at least once a day during the winter. During heavy runoff events, the inflow forecasts are updated every six hours or more often if required or conditions change. Spring Snowmelt Forecasting Weekly snowmelt forecasts are provided each spring to assist water management entities in dealing with the timing and magnitude of the spring snowmelt peak.
Coordination is required with many cooperators.
Weekly forecasts are provided for all major reservoirs and several important control points. This approach, called Ensemble Streamflow Prediction or ESP, provides a distribution of future streamflow outcomes that can be sampled in any way desired. The approach is extremely flexible in that any time window and any attribute of streamflow can be analyzed. The most typical use is for weekly, monthly, and seasonal volumes and peaks. In addition, the system can be used to describe a whole host of information such as the distribution of low flow stages during the upcoming summer.