High-Resolution Storm Rainfall Analysis for Use in Hydrologic Modeling: Storm Precipitation Analysis System (SPAS) and NEXRAD Weather Radar

摘要

The Storm Precipitation Analysis System (SPAS) is a sophisticated meteorological tool used to characterize the temporal and spatial details of rainfall events. SPAS was designed to produce storm depth-area-duration (DAD) analyses for making objective comparisons of rainfall associated with extreme storms in Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) studies. A SPAS analysis usually covers a relatively large area (generally >1000 square miles), requires extensive data mining and analysis, and provides a wide range of deliverables including a full storm DAD analysis. However, hydrologic runoff model calibrations have been the catalyst to use SPAS to provide storm analyses over much smaller domains (generally <100 square miles) with or without the DAD analysis while providing a sufficient set of deliverables for hydrologic modeling purposes. The results are provided as spatially distributed rainfall (spatial resolution approximately one third square mile) over sub-basins or the average rainfall over sub-basins. Rainfall amounts can be provided as frequent as every six minutes but are usually provided hourly.