A Forecast Circulation Model of the St. Johns River, Florida

We present a nowcast/forecast hydrodynamic model of the St. John's River, Florida. The model is one of the tools being developed for the pilot project of the Coastal Storms Intiative (CSI), an interdisciplinary program NOAA is implementing to enhance the tools and resources available to coastal communities during storm events. CSI provides a one-stop shopping approach for coastal managers to access information they need to make timely informed decisions. While CSI is developing new tools and collecting new data, it is also critical that it build upon existing resources. Such is the case with the circulation modeling of the river, as the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) had previously developed a well calibrated application of the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code (EFDC) in the St. Johns River. To build upon this work, we ported their application to NOAA and integrated it into a real-time system for producing nowcasts and forecasts. Realtime data for winds, water levels, salinity and temperature are used to force the model nowcasts, and forecasts of wind and subtidal coastal water levels are used to drive the forecasts. The output is likewise made available in realtime on a website that will be accessible through the CSI home page. We are also developing an application of ELCIRC (Eularian-Lagrangian Circulation model) in the St. Johns River to examine the potential for simulating storm inundation in flood-prone areas of the watershed.