Validation of Climate-Based Lake Okeechobee Net Inflow Outlooks

The application of climate-based outlooks for operational planning in south Florida is an ongoing reality. Currently, the operational schedule for Lake Okeechobee considers the expected seasonal and multi-seasonal net inflow based on Croley's method and an in-house empirical method, both of which rely on the Climate Prediction Center's seasonal climate outlooks, and on sub-sampling of historically-observed inflows under analog historical climatologic conditions. A refined method which incorporates antecedent conditions into the inflow forecast is also discussed. The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of various methods for calculating net inflow outlooks for Lake Okeechobee for the period 1995 through 2005 against actual inflows.