Towards the Development of an Operational Forecast System for the Florida Coast

A nowcasting and forecasting system for storm surge, inundation, waves, and baroclinic flow for the Florida coast has been developed. The system is based on dynamically coupled CH3D and SWAN models and can use a variety of modules to provide different input forcing, boundary and initial conditions. The system is completely automated and operates unattended at pre-scheduled intervals as well as in event-triggered mode in response to Atlantic-basin tropical cyclone advisories issued by the National Hurricane Center. The system provides up to 72-h forecasts forward depending on the input dataset duration. Spatially, the system spans the entire Florida coastline by employing four high-resolution domains with resolutions as fine as 10-30 m in the near-shore and overland to allow the system to resolve fine estuarine details such as in the Intracoastal Waterway and minor tributaries. The system has been validated in both hindcast and nowcast/forecast modes using water level and salinity data from a variety of sources and has been found to run robustly during the test periods. Low level products (e.g., raw output datasets) are disseminated using THREDDS while a custom defined web-based graphical user interface (GUI) was developed for high level access.