New in Guardian: HydroNET weather information

Thanks to a unique collaboration between Guardian and HydroNET Australia, the best available BoM weather information is now easily available in your Guardian Control Centre.

With affected populations and weather volatility on the increase, easy access to real-time weather information has become essential before, during and after weather related events. The recent impacts of Cyclone Debbie being a good example. This information enables Emergency Managers to make better informed decisions to minimize the social and economic impact of these events.

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The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has excellent weather forecast information and weather radars around Australia. This gridded, and area-covered, rainfall information (also available between gauges) greatly improves the understanding of the current and forecasted spatial distribution of rainfall. HydroNET RainWatch makes this Australian gridded rainfall and weather data easily accessible for emergency managers, also for areas between the gauges. HydroNET collects, stores and processes the BoM weather data and makes this information easily available as interactive map in the Guardian Control Centre.

Benefits of gridded rainfall data

The standard method of measuring precipitation is by means of rain gauges. A high number of rain gauges are required to adequately capture the spatial distribution of precipitation. Insight into this spatial distribution is key to fully understand and predict where (flash) floods or other weather-related events are occurring or can be expected. Rain gauges alone can also not provide insight into the forecasted rainfall distribution. With gridded data from radars and weather models, rainfall information is also available between gauges.

Choose your HydroNET data layers

The following weather information is available via the HydroNET-Guardian module:
• For areas with Australian radar coverage: rainfall sum for any time period (examples: the last hour,24 hours, 3 days, week, month) per 1x1km grid or aggregated to your own defined catchments or regions.
• For all areas in Australia: forecasted rainfall sum based on the BoM ADFD model for any period up to 5 days ahead per 5x5km grid or aggregated to your own defined catchments or regions.