Study region
Continental United States (CONUS).
Study focus
The National Water Model (NWM), operational since 2016, provides real-time, continuous hydrologic forecasts across the CONUS. Prior studies have evaluated NWM performance, but comprehensive assessments across multiple regions, lead times, and settings remain limited. This study evaluates NWM version 2.1 short-range forecasts for multiple flood events during 2021–2023, analyzing performance across varying watershed characteristics, flood magnitudes (return periods), and lead times. We used data from 306 U.S. Geological Survey gauges across 16 study areas, several with multiple floods per site, to assess forecast accuracy in terms of hydrograph skill, peak discharge, flood volume, and time-to-peak bias.
New hydrologic insights for the region
Results show that forecast accuracy improves with shorter lead times and smaller floods but varies by watershed traits and climate. Systematic underestimation of peak discharge and flood volume occurred across all basin types. Urban, regulated, arid, and low-order watersheds tend to show higher forecast errors. We qualitatively inspected hydrograph shapes, finding that while many forecasts captured rising and falling limbs, some exhibited systematic anomalies, such as consistently declining, delayed forecasts, and failure to detect sharp flood peaks, highlighting structural issues in model response. Findings provide insight into the strengths and limitations of NWM short-range flood forecasts and offer a baseline for evaluating future NWM versions and the emerging NextGen modeling framework.
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