ABSTRACT:

This HydroShare resource accompanies the HydroLearn module Understanding Flash Floods Through Storm Tracking. It provides everything an instructor or self-paced learner needs to investigate the meteorological and hydrologic sides of a real flash flood and to communicate the findings as a post-event report.
The resource is built around the June 20-22, 2024 northwest Iowa flash flood, a textbook example of an MCS-driven event that produced new peaks of record at ten USGS streamgages and an estimated 310 million dollars in damages. It contains:
- Interactive Jupyter notebooks for the two learning activities of the module:
- Activity 1: Storm investigation with ATRACKCS (mesoscale convective system identification and tracking from satellite cloud-top temperature and IMERG precipitation).
- Activity 2: Hydrograph analysis (USGS streamgage selection, 15 minute discharge retrieval, event extraction, flash flood metrics, rainfall-runoff lag, peak propagation across the river network).
- The ATRACKCS object-based storm tracking algorithm with installation scripts for both the CUAHSI JupyterHub server and local environments.

After working through the materials, learners will be able to identify and characterize an MCS from satellite observations, detect and quantify flash flood signals from streamgage data and link storm evolution to watershed response.