2. Northeast Regional Operational Workshop Annual Meeting University of Albany Tuesday, November 5, 2002

3. An Early Alert System for Flooding in the MARFC Domain Justin Brolley and Paul Knight Pennsylvania State University Richard Grumm and David Ondrejik National Weather Service State College, PA

4. Flood Events

5. Maps of Precipitation Forecast

6. This project is funded by the National Weather Service's Cooperative Program for Operational, Meteorology Education, and Training (COMET).

7. Project Description n Historic Floods –Date/Time –Location/Basin –Precipitation/Length of Precipitation –Flash Flood/Routine Flood –Socioeconomic Impact n NCEP Reanalysis Fields – Maxima and minima standard deviations of Temperature, Height, Specific Humidity, and Wind from 1000 hPa to 200 hPa correlate with floods – Select thresholds of top five parameters for forecasting floods

8. NCEP Reanalysis Fields

9. Forecast Domain (CTP Office)

10. Flood Events

11. Pattern Recognition

12. Cross Section Departures

13. Atmospheric Variables

14. Areal Domain

15. Algorithm Development n Assess Domain Variables –Read the maxima and minima of temperature, height, specific humidity, and wind from all levels –Obtain the values from top five seasonal parameters to check against thresholds –Sort variables by season, parameter, and sign of deviation n Check Parameters –Check for any parameters exceeding thresholds –Compare list of parameters exceeding thresholds with the percentage occurrence of floods –Assign risk of flood from list of combination of parameters n Output Risk

16. On-going Work - Expansion of flood data base to fit entire domain and back to 1950 and back to 1950 - Reassess flood risks based on the enhanced database database - Develop real-time interface with model anomaly forecast forecast - Test and refine risk algorithm through several seasons seasons