A semi‐empirical wind set‐up forecasting model for Lake Champlain

Abstract

The precision of Lake Champlain's water level estimation is a key component in the flood forecasting process for the Richelieu River. Hydrological models do not typically take into consideration the effects of the wind on the water level (also known as the wind set‐up). The objective of this study is to create an empirical wind set‐up forecast model for Lake Champlain during high wind events. The proposed model uses wind speed and direction across the Lake, as well as wind gusts as inputs. The model is calibrated to a subset of observations and evaluated on an independent sample, considering four wind speed bins. It is tested and compared to a variant of the Zuider Zee equation on 20 wind set‐up events that occurred between 2017 and 2019 using hindcast data from five different numerical weather prediction systems (GDPS, RDPS, HRDPS, NOAA and ECMWF). A quantile mapping‐based forecast calibration scheme is implemented for each of the forecast products to correct their biases. Results show that events are successfully predicted by the proposed model at least 72 h in advance. These results are better than the other comparative models found in the literature and tested herein. Overall, significant improvements are obtained by including wind speed and wind gusts from different weather stations.