Authors: R.Goska (radoslaw-goska@uiowa.edu), Witold Krajewski (witold-krajewski@uiowa.edu), B.Brown (bartley-brown@uiowa.edu), University of Iowa, October 2024

The browser provides insights into the ability of the NEXRAD network of weather radars WSR-88DP to provide hydrologically relevant information. The underlying data is the hourly rainfall accumulation product, corrected with rain gauge data, as developed by the National Severe Storms Laboratory (Zhang et al. 2016; https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-mrms-pds/). The product known as the Multi Radar Multi Sensor (MRMS) has approximately 1 km2 spatial resolution, which for the purpose of the browser, has been downgraded to about 10 km2 using a nearest neighbor interpolation method. The period of data included in the browser is 2017-2023.

The browser allows swift inspecting two variables: (1) rainfall accumulation (in mm) of an arbitrary consecutive period one day or longer; and (2) probability of detection (in %) of rainfall accumulation values greater than a threshold. For the threshold of zero, for a “perfect” product with no uncertainties this would be an equivalent to the probability of rain.

The browser features many useful tools such as dynamic color scale selection, number of colors, lower and upper thresholds, and more. When the values of the variable of interest exceed the threshold, no color mapping is performed, and the background map is displayed. To enhance the hydrologic context, basin boundaries, as defined by the USGS stream gauges can be displayed.

Acknowledgement:
Funding for this project was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), awarded to the Cooperative Institute for Research on Hydrology (CIROH) through the NOAA Cooperative Agreement with The University of Alabama, NA22NWS4320003. CIROH Project: Intelligent Data Analytics and Communication Cyberinfrastructure for Research to Operations in Hydrology Subaward No.: A22-0306-S005-A01.

References:
Zhang, J., Howard, K., Langston, C., Kaney, B., Qi, Y., Tang, L., Grams, H., Wang, Y., Cockcks, S., Martinaitis, S., Arthur, A., Cooper, K., Brogden, J., & Kitzmillller, D. (2016). Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) quantitative precipitation estimation: Initial operating capabilities. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(4), 621–638.
doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00174.1