Forecasting runoff for power and irrigation from relatively low-level areas

A forecasting procedure is developed for estimating the forthcoming water supply from the 2,205,000 acre Klamath River Basin in Eastern Oregon. Two thirds of this basin lays in the rainfall altitudes while one third lies at high elevations with snow cover during the winter. The basin is divided into 6 smaller tributaries and handled separately. Where areas are covered with snow this source of supply is forecast with data from snow surveys while the rainfall portions of the basins are forecast with rainfall formulas. The data for these procedures are shown in computation tables, where the factors are weighted for areas and constants for either rain or snow portions. The separate forecast scheme is routed downstream building a total forecast into Klamath Lake. The weighting factors and the procedures are explained in the text.Discussions are presented by Dr. J.E. Church, Bertram S. Barnes, and R.A. Work.