El Salvador – Regional Forecast System for the Río Lempa

Hurricane Mitch slammed into the Central American coastline in October 1998 with 180 mph winds and four days of torrential rains resulting in over 9,000 deaths and leaving more than two million people homeless.

Satellite Image of Hurricane Mitch

In addition to the destruction of the social and economic infrastructure, much of the weather and river monitoring networks were also destroyed, leaving the Central American countries unable to monitor and forecast these types of events in the future.

As part of the Hurricane Mitch Recovery Program, RTi contracted with the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) to develop a trans-national river forecasting center for the Río Lempa Basin, which covers portions of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. RTi designed and helped install a real-time hydrometeorological network in the river basin, and established the Center in San Salvador. The operational forecasting system includes a satellite downlink receiving real-time field data, two LINUX Workstations running the NWS River Forecast System (NWSRFS), and database and product development software, all running on a local area network installed by RTi. The forecast products are disseminated via the Internet to government agencies, utilities, emergency management agencies, and local communities in all three Río Lempa Basin countries. The project also included several weeks of hands-on, in-country training and the development of a Spanish language Graphical User Interface for operating the forecast system and related programs.

Map-based Interface for the Río Lempa Forecast Webpage see http://mapas.snet.gob.sv/lempa/index.php

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