National Weather Service Professional Development Series Professional Competency Unit

Description of Job Duty Competency to be Achieved

Generate, issue, and monitor hydrologic forecast products.

Description of Need

The forecaster must use available product generation applications to produce, review, and disseminate river forecast products to appropriate customers. Before issuing the final product, the forecaster must make a final "reality check" of forecast values. The forecaster must then monitor recently issued forecasts to see if changing conditions have made it neccessary to issue an update.

Specific Job Task Skills and Knowledge

1. Know each product issued by the RFC.

2. Use available product generation applications to prepare and disseminate all RFC products in accordance with accepted office procedures and national policy.

3. Use and interpret Standard Hydrometeorological Exchange Format (SHEF) - encoded data and forecasts and make manual adjustments to forecast and guidance products as necessary.

4. Apply knowledge of hydrologic science, local hydroclimatology, and flood history in making a final check of forecast values before they are issued.

5. Use current tools to monitor recently issued forecasts by comparing them with the latest observations.

Instructional Components

Instructional Component 10.1: - Documentation: Weather Service Operations Manual, Chapter E-12: RFC Products. This chapter contains policies on RFC hydrologic products.

Instructional Component 10.2: - Workshop: NWSRFS Product Generation Applications. This workshop will describe how to execute the current applications used to format river forecast products for distribution to WFOs and other users. This workshop could possibly be combined with another workshop such as Basic OFS.

Instructional Component 10.3: - On-Station Training: Local Flood History. Field offices will maintain an archive of analyses on historical flood events in their area of responsibility and make it available to forecasters.

Instructional Component 10.4 - On-Station Training: Hydrologic Forecast Monitoring. Each field office will provide training on topics related to the monitoring of forecasts, such as: local policies on when to issue and update forecasts, how to limit the stair-step and yo-yo problems in forecasts, tools or methods for tracking current forecasts vs. observed values, and local/regional policies on forecast terminology (e.g., crest, flood stage, etc.)

Instructional Component 10.5 - Externally-Provided Training: HTML/Web Development. Basic training on Web development will be obtained through external providers such as community colleges or commercial vendors.

Instructional Component 10.6 - Workshop: HTML/Web Development. This training will provide instruction on how to effectively and efficiently develop and maintain a web site for distribution of NWS products and other information. Topics covered will include:

Instructional Component 10.7 - Web Module (Proposed): Introduction to Standard Hydrometeorological Exchange Format (SHEF). This module will introduce the three basic formats used in SHEF - .A (single station), .B (multiple station, multiple parameter, header driven) and .E (single station, single parameter, evenly spaced time series). The module describes how each of these formats are used to encode data and provides simple exercises.

Instructional Component 10.8 - Documentation: Weather Service Hydrology Handbook No. 1 - Standard Hydrometeorological Exchange Format. This handbook describes how SHEF is used for coding data in a form suitable for both visual and computer recognition.

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