Effect of moving storms on attainment of equilibrium discharge

Although rainfall is assumed spatially uniform in conventional hydrological modelling for rainfall–runoff simulations, moving storms have been shown to have substantial influence on flow hydrographs. In this study, criteria for attainment of the equilibrium discharge from watersheds subjected to moving storms were examined. Non-linear numerical kinematic-wave models were developed to simulate runoff from an overland plane and from a V-shaped catchment. Dimensional analysis was applied to obtain the independent variables to be used as control factors in performing a series of numerical tests. The results indicate that, for storms moving downstream, runoff can attain equilibrium discharge even though the storm length is shorter than the watershed length and the rainfall duration is less than the time to equilibrium of the watershed for stationary uniform storms. The phenomenon of attainment of equilibrium discharge from watersheds subjected to moving storms is contradictory to conventional hydrologic design, which assumes the storm duration must equal the time to equilibrium to attain the maximum discharge. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.