NOAA National Water Model: Short-Range Forecasts for the Continental U.S.

NOAA's National Water Model (NWM) simulates and forecasts water budget variables, including snowpack, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and streamflow, over the entire continental United States. The model, launched in August 2016, is operated by NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction. This bucket contains a four-week rollover of the Short Range Forecast model output and its corresponding forcing data.

Use Cases

• Forecasting streamflow for flood warning systems based on hourly deterministic forecasts out to 18 hours.
• Modeling soil moisture and snowpack for agricultural irrigation planning and drought assessment.
• Analyzing evapotranspiration rates for ecosystem and water budget studies.
• Providing hydrological state inputs for reservoir operation and barge navigation planning.

Strengths

• Covers the entire continental United States (CONUS), providing national-scale data.
• Model cycles hourly and produces hourly deterministic forecasts out to 18 hours.
• Forced with meteorological data from the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) and Rapid Refresh (RAP) models.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction.

Collection Method

Output from the National Water Model's Short Range Forecast configuration.

Time Range

Model launched in August 2016; output is a rolling four-week archive.

Freshness

Contains a four-week rollover of model output, suggesting regular updates.

Geography

Continental United States (CONUS).