In high school, I was really into meteorology and data science which led me really get in the weekds with meterloical data sources. Growing in South Florida also fed into this intrest as hurricanes are a common fiture here. I got really into raw hurricane track data realsed by the national hurricane center as well raw dopplar radar data relased by the national weather service. I even persued several of my own resahc projects in this niech. One wa forcasting hurricane track data in the future using simple times series forasitng using ML models. Another was aligining level 2 radar data ith the Storm Events Database to extract radar frames right and durring an the formation of a tornado, perform feature extraction, and then use ML models to predict if a tornado will form in the next 10 minutes. Keep in mind this was in the 2016-2018 time perisod before the larger explosion in deep leaing with new architectures so at the time I was just gettign into "simpler" models like MLPs and CNNs and all the simpler things in scikit-learn. The field of AI in meterology has really taken off with modern deeo leaing front and center in the field. Also at the time alot of this core raw data was much harder to get access to compared to today where AI in meteology is dicing the field to make this kind of data more accessable.
While nerding out about all this, I came accross somthing called BDHYDRO which I belive is a not well know but really facinating data source of data that Iw ould like to sahre.
DBHYDRO is a database of meteorological and hydrological data maintained by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD); even then I might be underselling it as there is also data on water wulaity and posbbily measured states of different water contol stcutres. The SFWMD is a mulit-partner agency that manages water resources in the southern half of the state of Florida. Due to the georguacy and climate, and ecosystems in the south half of the stae, managing water as a resouce is a bit more complicated and needs to be cordinated acorss mutiple cities and regions.
Flroida has a giant fresh water lake in the middle of the state called Lake Okeechobee. There are seveal lakes and other water sources that feed into lake Okeechobee from the north, a main one being the Kissimmee River. Water then flows out out of the lake via two paths: to thw west via the Caloosahatchee River but mainly to the south towards Everglades and the Atlantic Ocean. In the past this flow from the lake to the south occured nuatlly and is spread out over the large relaively flat area of the Everglades, thus creating the unique ecoloy of low lying wetlands and swamps. In this context of natural flow, the Everglades actually coveres a much larger area psaniing from the southern tip of the state all the way up to the lake as opposed to the current borders of Everglades National Park.
However, man made factors and chnages have altered the natural flow of water in the region. The area souing and south of lake okeechobee has been redeclepdeo for agricalautla use and alod of the lands between lake okeechobee and the current everglades are now were drained in the apst for for agriculatla use and other development. Aifally, the flow of water from the lake to the south though the east coast with high urband deleoppen is now contioleld via man made canals and pumping stations. These factors in totla have alatereled the natural north to south flow of water as well as related the true ecology of the resion to the current everglades.
There other several other factors to note. Due to the geography of the region, there are also mutiple large aquifers in the region that hold fresh water from rain and from tthis norht-south flow of water. manageing these reousces is also an important consideratio. Also the interface between the fresh water from lake okeechobee and the salt water from the ocean creae ecosystems called estuaries where fresh and salt water mix. In the evergaldes and on the coast, these estuaries are important for the ecology of the region and are more sensitive to changes in the flow of water as well as the content of the water. Adially, south florida is prone to hurricane and large rainfall storms leading to more complexity of another significant and more vaibale water source in the region. All of these factos compud even further with the higly hurbned devleopemnt along the sourth east coast of the state.
In total, this system is complex, and as humans lovingi in this system there is a really hard balance between mainting the natural ecology of the region and the need to manage water for agriculatla and urban use. And this is why there is a South Florida Water Management District.
So the SFWMD is a multi-partner agency that manages water resources in the central and southern half of the state of Florida. However this are ai ssol large that ther are mutle sub activites differnt going on. For example, mainting and colling water reouces in lake Okechboie si a discint and large are aof conern. Me being form south east flrodia, the concern her eis the management of the flow of water between the ocean and ethe evergaldes while maining contol of water level in the urbanized ares betwen the two. Afially there are other key actives like amitniiang the goal of the auquifers as wellas maining healthy elcolgy in regiosn such as the everglades.
A big way this is all orchested is via a system of cannals, locks, pumps, and other water contorl strcutres. With these man made systems, the SFWMD can control the flow of water between Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades, the Atlantic Ocean primarily via the east coast. Large rain falls, lake droughs, and restoationefforsts all will cause or reuire differnt graidnts of water levels to form in the regiosn and simtimes manual movement of the water againt a gradient or towards a weke graiten fo flow is needed to maintian the water levels in the region. Water treatment plants, urban water management, and the ecology itself are also other sources of management.
With all this infacture and complexty of such system, the SFWMD needs to collect and manage a lot of data to make informed decisions as well as perform day to day oepations. This is where DBHYDRO comes in.
DBHYDRO is a database of meteorological and hydrological data maintained by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). The main interface with DBHYDRO is a dataed looking yet super utilkiatian and efeftcive web interface that allows users to querry data the SQL dataset in the backend.