Colleen Walford gave a presentation on flood forecasting methodology in Alberta. She works for Alberta ESRD. and reviewed the event operations methodology that the River Forecast Centre uses within Alberta. The mandate of the River Forecast Team is to provide Albertans with information related to current and future river or river ice conditions, so they can make decisions about water and emergency response planning. They do this by offering real time flow forecasting and support to the public, municipal emergency planners, industry, federal and provincial parks, First Nations, and NRCS.
They gain their information from 400 hydrometric stations, 630 meteorological stations and 146 mode forecast points. Flow volumes are measured at twenty locations in Alberta, and forecasters are on duty between March and October of each year. They record information like: precipitation, snow packs, snow water equivalent, soil moisture, and tracking weather models coming out of the U.S.
With regards to the Calgary flood of 2013, on June 15th, the preliminary weather forecast was that a 100mm storm would occur with a high probability of 200mm falling locally. By June 17th, the River Forecast Centre started to contact monitoring groups and municipalities. By June 18th, there was a refined estimate of expected precipitation amount, based on most recent weather model runs. This amount was 80-160 mm within 48 hours. On June 19th and 20th, flood advisories were issued.
This presentation was a part of the CWRA Alberta Branch Annual Conference, March 2014.
