2023 HydroForecast Wrapped

As we say goodbye to 2023, we've taken some time to reflect on how HydroForecast has grown this year. It was a busy year filled with new feature updates, conferences and events, and new research. As we're reflecting, we also threw in a sneak peek about some exciting updates that we have planned for 2024. Read on to learn about them!

Quick stats on our year

1. Organizations around the world who deal with water volatility are using HydroForecast for decision making and planning in the following areas, as of the end of 2023:

• Hydropower
• Recreation management
• Water supply management
• Flood control
• Planning for agriculture
• Conservation efforts

In hydropower, one of our largest markets, HydroForecast is being used to operate a total of 10,015 MW, an increase of 1,271 additional MW of energy compared to the start of 2023. That’s enough energy to power 10 million homes!

2. HydroForecast is live on five continents and 14 countries

3. Forecasting in 20 new basins around the world

• 39 new short-term forecast points
• 27 new seasonal forecast points

4. Launched and deployed our newest product: HydroForecast Long-term

5. 97% customer renewal rate

6. Hosted 5 webinars during which we answered your top questions, introduced new features, and discussed our latest research

7. Awarded Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grants from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Features & model updates released in 2023

We’re always looking for ways to improve users’ experience with HydroForecast. Below is a list of highlighted updates we released this year:

• We saw how much short-term changes in weather patterns can affect seasonal water supply, especially in places like California that are prone to atmospheric rivers, so we updated our seasonal forecast to use HydroForecast Short-term for the first 10 days
• We made further updates to our seasonal model and provided a deep dive under the hood
• To provide a quick and digestible way for users to assess the current state of their basins and how they are changing over time, we added spatial visualizations of weather inputs to the dashboard
• We began to pull in and display new weather forecast sources to provide the most up-to-date weather data
• For instances where an upcoming flow event might denote risk or action for your team, we added threshold-based forecast alerts to allow users to set up custom notifications
• To provide timely and frequent forecast updates, we made updates to our forecast production schedule
• We are now displaying USGS NHD flow lines on the dashboard map for users to view the underlying flow network in their basins

… and more!

Read more about dashboard features in our support documentation here.

Coming soon: A sneak peek into what we have planned for 2024

New short-term model on the way!

Our team has implemented a novel method for integrating input data that varies in time horizon, which adds resilience to HydroForecast’s production workflow during times of weather outages. This advancement also allows us to integrate inputs like the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) forecasts, which have a 48-hour prediction window.

A California statewide public historical streamflow dataset

We are partnering with The Nature Conservancy - California to develop a statewide public historical streamflow dataset across a diverse set of river basins, including both gauged and ungauged areas. We will produce natural flow and actual, or regulated, flow data over a historical time period to provide insight into the impact of human activity on rivers across the state and to assist future decision making and planning around development. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us to learn more about this work at team@hydroforecast.com.

Seasonal forecast improvements

We are listening to how our customers are using our seasonal forecasts for their planning efforts and working on new visuals to customize how you view our seasonal volume forecasts. We know it’s important to view projected water supply over a key period of time, so these visualizations will include flexibility in dates that users can define.

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Stay tuned for updates!