NWM Data

The National Water Model is the hydrologic modeling framework that simulates observed and forecast streamflow over the entire continental United States.

Back to Data Sources

Core Data Repositories

• Operational NWM data from nomads https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/nwm/
• Geoserver: https://opengeo.ncep.noaa.gov/geoserver/www/index.html
• FIM API Instructions: NWS FIM API (PDF)
• NWM Hydrofabric: data page

Related:

• Service bounds are used to define areas of responsibility.
• VPU’s are used as national scale ‘physical’ boundaries and the hydrofabric defines the physiographic model views.
• TIGER is the geographic definition to which the census data reports, and loosely conforms to aggregations of these bounds.

Cloud Access (GCP & AWS)

Google Cloud Platform

GCP Bucket Browser: NWM Public Dataset

# Pull NWM data from GCP to local raw directory
gsutil -m cp -r "gs://national-water-model/nwm.{yyyymmdd}/short_range_coastal_atlgulf/" G:\data\raw\NWM\{yyyymmdd}\short_range_coastal_atlgulf\
gsutil -m cp -r "gs://national-water-model/nwm.{yyyymmdd}/short_range_coastal_atlgulf_psurge/" G:\data\raw\NWM\{yyyymmdd}\short_range_coastal_atlgulf_psurge\

API Access via Lynker-Spatial

You can hit Lynker proxy for direct JSON/CSV access:

• Latest Short Range: https://api.lynker-spatial.com/streamflow/short_range/101?t=latest
• Specific Analysis Hour: https://api.lynker-spatial.com/streamflow/analysis/101?t=20251121T15
• Retrospective Window: https://api.lynker-spatial.com/streamflow/retrospective/101?start=20211001T10&end=20211002T10