The Effect of Storm Direction on Flood Frequency Analysis

G. Perez, J. D. Gomez-Velez, R. Mantilla, D. B. Wright, Z. Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Storm direction modulates a hydrograph's magnitude and duration, thus having a potentially large effect on local flood risk. However, how changes in the preferential storm direction affect the probability distribution of peak flows remains unknown. We address this question with a novel Monte Carlo approach where stochastically transposed storms drive hydrologic simulations over medium and mesoscale watersheds in the Midwestern United States. Systematic rotations of these watersheds are used to emulate changes in the preferential storm direction. We found that the peak flow distribution impacts are scale-dependent, with larger changes observed in the mesoscale watershed than in the medium-scale watershed. We attribute this to the high diversity of storm patterns and the storms' scale relative to watershed size. This study highlights the potential of the proposed stochastic framework to address fundamental questions about hydrologic extremes when our ability to observe these events in nature is hindered by technical constraints and short time records.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere2020GL091918
JournalGeophysical Research Letters
Volume48
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - May 16 2021
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was funded by the U. S. Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Subsurface Biogeochemical Research Program Scientific Focus Area at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation awards 1830172 and 2020814. D. B. Wright's contributions were supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Hydrologic Sciences Program CAREER project EAR‐1749638. The Iowa Flood Center supported R. Mantilla's contributions.

Keywords

  • Hydrologic modeling
  • peak flow distribution
  • storm direction
  • storm transposition

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