Forecasting water inflow into the Iriklinskoe Reservoir

A system of methods for forecasting the water inflow into the Iriklinskoe Reservoir on the Ural River are proposed. The system includes the long-term forecast of the inflow volume over the spring flood period and the second quarter, which is annually released on March 5, as well as methods for the preliminary long-term forecast of these quantities, which is annually released in January and February. These methods are based on linear dependences of the forecasted water inflow on the maximum snow water equivalent and on the pre-winter moisture index of the reservoir’s catchment area. Based on the hydrograph extrapolation method, techniques for daily short- and medium-term forecasting of the inflow to the reservoir for 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 days have been developed. A verification using the data for the period from 2003 to 2024 showed satisfactory quality of all proposed methods, which allows recommending them for application in order to improve the efficiency of using water resources of the Iriklinskoe Reservoir.