Water Stewardship Information Sources

Citation Solano, CV. 2008. Forecasting Coquitlam River basin, British Columbia. Western Snow Conference.
Organization BC Hydro
URL http://www.westernsnowconference.org/sites/westernsnowconference.org/PDFs/2008Solano.pdf
Abstract/Description or Keywords Rain-on-snow events during warm periods with high precipitation amounts can produce high floods. Due to
the complexity of the process, predicting run-off during these events is difficult and current conceptual hydrologic
models are believed to simulate rain-on-snow events only very poorly. The inability of conceptual hydrologic
models to simulate rain-on-snow events correctly may eventually translate into a greater risk adopted into BC
Hydro’s operations. For this purpose, hydrologic simulations and forecasts of several rain-on-snow events for the
coastal Coquitlam watershed, British Columbia, Canada, were selected for analysis. In the first part of this study,
the ability of the UBC Watershed Model to simulate Coquitlam Reservoir inflows during rain-on-snow events
using observed precipitation and temperature data as model input was investigated using various performance
measures. In the second part of this study, performance measures for hydrologic forecasts for the selected rain-onsnow
events were calculated and the forecast skill determined. The result of this study shed more light on
hydrologic simulations and forecasts of rain-on-snow events in a coastal Pacific Northwest watershed.
Information Type conference article
Regional Watershed Lower Fraser
Sub-watershed if known Coquitlam River
Aquifer #
Comments
Project status complete
Contact Name Christina Solano
Contact Email [email protected]