Design and quantification of an extreme winter storm scenario for emergency preparedness and planning exercises in California

Michael D. Dettinger (), F. Martin Ralph, Mimi Rose Abel (), Tapash Das, Paul Neiman, Dale Cox, Gary Estes, David Reynolds, Robert Hartman, Daniel Cayan and Lucy Jones
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Michael D. Dettinger: U.S. Geological Survey, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
F. Martin Ralph: NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory/Physical Sciences Division
Mimi Rose Abel: NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory/Physical Sciences Division
Tapash Das: Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Paul Neiman: NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory/Physical Sciences Division
Dale Cox: US Geological Survey Multihazards Demonstration Program
Gary Estes: California Extreme Precipitation Symposium
David Reynolds: National Weather Service
Robert Hartman: NOAA/NWS California-Nevada River Forecast Center
Daniel Cayan: U.S. Geological Survey, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Lucy Jones: US Geological Survey Multihazards Demonstration Program

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2012, vol. 60, issue 3, No 17, 1085-1111

Abstract: Abstract The USGS Multihazards Project is working with numerous agencies to evaluate and plan for hazards and damages that could be caused by extreme winter storms impacting California. Atmospheric and hydrological aspects of a hypothetical storm scenario have been quantified as a basis for estimation of human, infrastructure, economic, and environmental impacts for emergency-preparedness and flood-planning exercises. In order to ensure scientific defensibility and necessary levels of detail in the scenario description, selected historical storm episodes were concatentated to describe a rapid arrival of several major storms over the state, yielding precipitation totals and runoff rates beyond those occurring during the individual historical storms. This concatenation allowed the scenario designers to avoid arbitrary scalings and is based on historical occasions from the 19th and 20th Centuries when storms have stalled over the state and when extreme storms have arrived in rapid succession. Dynamically consistent, hourly precipitation, temperatures, barometric pressures (for consideration of storm surges and coastal erosion), and winds over California were developed for the so-called ARkStorm scenario by downscaling the concatenated global records of the historical storm sequences onto 6- and 2-km grids using a regional weather model of January 1969 and February 1986 storm conditions. The weather model outputs were then used to force a hydrologic model to simulate ARkStorm runoff, to better understand resulting flooding risks. Methods used to build this scenario can be applied to other emergency, nonemergency and non-California applications.

Keywords: Storm hazards; California; Flood; Scenario; Emergency preparedness; Disaster management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-011-9894-5

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