1. Overview of the NIDIS Weekly Climate, Water and Drought Assessment
NIDIS Upper Colorado River Basin Pilot
Nolan Doesken and Becky Smith

2. CCC Staff working on NIDIS UCRB Pilot and Weekly Webinars
Nolan Doesken—The Head Honcho!
Wendy Ryan—in charge of organizing webinars
Becky Smith—in charge of writing summaries
Zach Schwalbe and Morgan Phillips— content contributors
Noah Newman—contact point during webinar briefings
Henry Reges— distributor

3. Testing began in February 2010

4. About the weekly briefings
Every Tuesday morning at 10:00am
Collaboration—individuals have their own “portion” to inform people about
Wendy brings all pieces together in one presentation
About 20 minutes to bring everyone up- to-date on the “state” of the climate and water of the UCRB
Discussion and consensus decision at end

5. Who is involved? Webinar content contributors
Colorado Climate Center
Wyoming State Climate Office
USGS
NOAA/National Weather Service offices
CBRFC
Discussion contributors/attendees
NCWCD, Denver Water, Colorado River District
Upper basin municipal water providers
USDA/NRCS
Federal land managers (BLM, USFS)
Drought Monitor authors
Ski resorts
River commissioners
Local government
General public

6. Why are these so important?
People stay well informed
Anyone can be involved in the decision-making process
We all have the opportunity to learn from each other
Decisions are made at the local level, then sent to the USDM author
Tailored to fit the purposes of many, whether they want to know about the current state, or are interested in the USDM maps
Drought Early Warning—constant monitoring, with no surprises

7. Precipitation and Snowpack
Analysis of precipitation
Last week
Last month
Since October 1
Analysis of snowpack
One-week changes in percent of average
Percentile rankings
Analog to previous wet/dry years

8. Streamflow Coordination with USGS Current conditions across the basin
Site specific analysis
Comparison to same date over the last 10 years
Streamflow forecast update from CBRFC

9. Water Supply and Demand
Time series of reservoir levels
Current levels compared to historic levels
Temperatures
Soil moisture
How to quantify water demand… still a work in progress

10. Precipitation Forecast
Short term precipitation forecasts
Will precip help improve some dry areas?
Will lack of precip cause deterioration?
Long term forecasts: prevailing patterns, what’s in store for the season

11. DROUGHT AND WATER DISCUSSION
Current U.S. Drought Monitor map for the UCRB. Discuss which areas where drought should be introduced or taken out.

12. Contributions to the USDM
When changes to the map are discussed several things have happened
Drought monitor authors have not been on call. We redraw lines on powerpoint, save and send to author.
Author has been on the call, taken suggestions and added to next draft.
Author has taken control of webinar, and redrawn lines, live, with our input.

13. Weekly Summaries
After the webinars, a summary of all the information is distributed
These summaries are also sent weekly, even “out of season” when there are fewer webinars
climate.colostate.edu – links on left hand side to find past webinars, archived summaries, and register for upcoming webinars.
Next webinar Tuesday, August 31st

14. Using the Drought Portal to Improve the NIDIS UCRB Weekly Summary

15. How we currently get data
Precip maps—Wendy manually creates maps in GIS using COOP, Snotel, CoCoRaHS, and Coagmet data
Snotel maps—Wendy grabs data from different pages on the NRCS site
Reservoir data—Becky grabs data from USBR, NRCS, and receives data via

16. Current uses on the portal
Precip products
Current USDM map
VegDRI map
Different boundaries useful—states, counties, HUCs, labels of each

17. How can the drought portal help?
Need more data for precip products
Need more choices for precip products
Wide range of time periods
User defined time periods
Actual and percent of normal for all
Inclusion of percentile rankings
Inclusion of soil moisture, streamflow, reservoir data (one stop for everything)
Draw boundary line for UCRB
Location of reservoirs
Saved start-up page for each user (currently starts with state lines and powerplants)

18. Thank You!