An integrated hydrometeorological system was designed for the utilization of data from various sensors in the 3300 km2 Panama Canal Watershed for the purpose of producing real-time, spatially distributed, mean areal rainfall estimates, and
rainfall and flow forecasts. These forecasts are used by the Panama Canal Authority for water management. The system ingests
raw data from a 10 cm weather radar, automated rain gauges and surface meteorological stations, streamflow gauges, radiosonde
upper air profilers, and analysis and forecast fields from the operational 80 km Eta numerical weather prediction model of
the US National Weather Service State estimators utilize all available data for cloud, soil and channel model state updating
and rainfall and flow forecast variance generation. Merged radar and rain gage fields are produced in real time and are used
to compute mean areal precipitation for each sub-catchment in the watershed. Results of real time operation for the years
2000 and 2001 show useful system forecasts during severe storm periods.
Key words Panama - Panama Canal - hydrometeorological modeling - weather radar - rainfall-runoff - flow forecasting