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| 9/23/2025 | An Update on the Implementation of National Weather Service Experimental Flood Inundation Mapping - Available Services, Locations, and Timeline | To improve flood warning communication and help emergency managers prepare for and respond to flooding, the National Weather Service has begun to add new experimental flood inundation mapping services to its suite of forecast products. These new services complement and support the issuance of flood watches and warnings by providing near-real-time, high-resolution, neighborhood-level visualizations showing where, when, and how much flood waters are forecast. FIM maps are available on the National Water Prediction Service website and via Geographic Information System applications. https://water.noaa.gov. | Abshire, Kate | Emergencies, Floods, Tools, Communication | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 8/18/2025 | Celebrating 20 Years of Interagency Silver Jackets Collaboration | Please join us to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Silver Jackets! During this webinar, we highlighted the inaugural Silver Jackets teams – Ohio (formed in 2005) and Indiana (formed in 2006) – and heard from early & current Silver Jackets leaders about the state of interagency flood risk management collaboration before Silver Jackets came into existence and the value it added once stood up. Our panelists also discussed how the Ohio and Indiana teams have evolved over the past 20 years, what the teams’ greatest accomplishments are, and where Silver Jackets is headed in the future. | Hibner, David; Johnson, Manuela; Ferryman, Steve; Hecker, Ed; Brummett, Brandon; Hughes, Tom | Silver Jackets, Collaboration, Celebration, Anniversary | Recording and Transcript |
| 7/30/2025 | Glacier Lake Outburst Floods Along Mendenhall Lake/River: Revisiting a 2015 Silver Jackets Project | In 2011 a large flood occurred on the Mendenhall River with no obvious rainfall or snowmelt driver. Investigations after the event identified a new Glacial Dammed Lake (GDL) that had released and caused a jökulhlaup or Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). Another large GLOF occurred in 2014 with the highest record river stage up to that point. In response to this new unpredictable flooding hazard on the Mendenhall River the Alaska Silver Jackets team initiated and completed a flood inundation mapping project in 2015 to help inform planning and response; also supported by the USACE Floodplain Management Services Program (FPMS). These maps extended well above what was previously mapped and expected from rainfall, snowmelt and glacier flooding. Outburst floods continue to persist with sporadic partial draining of the GDL over the next eight years. In 2023, the basin nearly drained completely during an August outburst flood. This resulted in a flood of Record that exceeded previous events by nearly three feet on the river gage. The 2015 Silver Jackets inundation mapping project provided actionable information for the 2023 event and were critical again in 2024 when another even larger flood of record occurred. A science team continues to study this unique flooding hazard and is working with the local community to update and extend the mapping to higher flood levels with the possibility of larger events in the future. | Jacobs, Aaron; Johnson, Crane; Martinez, Philip | Glacier, Flooding, Outburst | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 6/25/2025 | Widespread Landslides Across Southern Appalachia Following Hurricane Helene: U.S. Geological Survey's Emergency Response, Initial Observations Historical Context | Between the 23rd-27th of September 2024, antecedent rain followed by Hurricane Helene produced widespread flooding and landsliding across southern Appalachia, resulting in one of the most damaging weather events in the region’s history. The back-to-back storms produced observed rainfall accumulations of up to 33 inches and hurricane-force winds gusting over 120 miles per hour in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia. The resulting regional flooding, landslides, and tree blowdown caused over 100 fatalities, damaged or destroyed critical infrastructure and thousands of structures, and severed connectivity across the region. Together with state, federal, and local partners, the U.S. Geological Survey activated their landslide emergency response team to coordinate rapid remote, aerial, and field mapping of thousands of landslides and their impacts. They also produced preliminary hazard models and assessments, daily situational reports, and educational and outreach materials. These efforts provided timely information to aid emergency response, and the initial observations highlight the destructive role of landslides and debris flows in this historic event. This presentation will describe the initial observations, including how landslides mobilized woody debris and delivered massive sediment loads to channels, streams, and reservoirs, contributing to the flood risk in the region. | Mirus, Benjamin | Hurricane, Landslide, Outreach | Presentation, Recording, and Transcript |
| 5/27/2025 | Extreme Event Gaming – A collaboration with Pennsylvania and West Virginia partners & Silver Jackets | Silver Jackets, West Virginia and Pennsylvania partners, and the USACE Huntington & Pittsburgh Districts coordinated to host an interactive workshop that takes traditional planning methods and turns them into a fast-paced, role-playing simulation of structured public participation focused on disaster preparation, response & recovery. Patricia Usher, Hannah Parlock, Catherine Tully, and Hunter Merritt took people through the extreme event game created by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the variety of audiences that participated, and lessons learned. | Tully, Catherine; Usher, Patricia; Parlock, Hannah; Merritt, Hunter | Workshop, Participation, Gaming | Presentation, Recording, Transcript, and Other Materials |
| 4/30/2025 | K-12 Flood Education and Outreach: a collaboration between the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, WV Silver Jackets, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers | Tomi Bergstrom gave an overview of Project WET (Water Education Today), an organization that provides interdisciplinary, hands-on water education resources to educators, for children aged Kindergarten to 12th grade. Hannah Parlock then explained the initiative to incorporate flood-focused lessons into the curriculum through a partnership with Silver Jackets and WV DEP. | Bergstrom, Tomi; Parlock, Hannah | Programs, Education, Outreach | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 3/20/2025 | Flood Impact Mapping. Collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Silver Jackets, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) | Athena Clark will give an overview of the USGS Real-Time Flood Impact Map - a web-based tool used to provide public facing real-time flooding information to the public using more relatable icon based graphics displaying specific impacts to key public features near USGS streamgages. Previously, flooding was reported as raw stage and discharge values as reported by the steamgage. Often the public did not understand the relationship of these values to flooding impacts on local infrastructure, putting the safety of the public at risk. David Evetts, Chris Laveau, and Russel Lodge will provide an overview of a collaboration between the ID & WA Silver Jackets, USGS, and USACE to establish the USGS Real-Time Flood Impact Map in Idaho and Washington. | Clark, Athena; Evetts, David; Laveau, Chris; Lodge, Russel | Collaboration, Mapping, Tool | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 2/19/2025 | From Flooded Island to Flood Mitigation Success Story: Fremont’s Partnership with USACE & Nebraska Silver Jackets | Derek, Chelsea, and Jennifer will provide an overview of the partnership between the City of Fremont, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and Nebraska Silver Jackets. With more than $19 million in damages from record flooding and levee overtopping in 2019, the City of Fremont, Nebraska became an island, cut off from surrounding communities. Prior to and immediately following the event, a multi-project partnership with the USACE was developed to support the mitigation and planning efforts to build the flood resiliency of Fremont. Fremont and other local partners combined to complete a Section 205 Study with USACE and two projects with Nebraska Silver Jackets. This presentation will highlight the integrated nature of the flood risk management approach taken by Fremont by reviewing multiple past and ongoing projects. Each project has improved the City's flood risk management capabilities throughout the flood risk lifecycle of Response, Recovery, Mitigation, and Planning. | Schriner, Derek; Harris, Chelsea; Dam, Jennifer | Flood, Mitigation, Partnership | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 1/10/2025 | Post-wildfire Policy Update: Introducing the Interagency Post-fire Integration Council | Recovery and post-fire flood response after catastrophic wildfires requires careful coordination across the entire landscape, between private landowners, local, state and Tribal governments, as well as and between federal agencies. To strengthen coordination across federal agencies during post-fire response and recovery, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, the Interior, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, and the Environmental Protection Agency signed a memorandum of understanding to streamline post-fire management. The agreement captures how participating federal partners plan to align post-fire condition assessments, increase emergency response capacity, and improve long-term recovery efforts across the landscape. This shared effort will be coordinated through the newly established Interagency Post-fire Integration Council (IPIC). Please join us for a one-hour webinar to meet incoming IPIC leadership, discuss priorities from the start, and look to ways to engage. | Knobloch, Jenna | Wildfire, Interagency, Policy | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 12/10/2024 | Advancements in HEC-RAS for Stormwater Modeling, 2D Floodway Evaluation, and More | Eric Tichansky and Cameron Ackerman provided an overview of the latest hydraulic modeling advancements in HEC-RAS including stormwater pipe networks and 2D floodway evaluation tools. HEC-RAS version 6.6 released in September 2024 includes the ability to create stormwater pipe networks and integrate them with 1D and 2D surface elements. The addition of stormwater pipe networks will expand the applicability of HEC-RAS in urban areas, allowing users to analyze the adequacy of stormwater systems and better characterize pluvial flood risk. Also included in HEC-RAS 6.6 are a suite of 2D floodway evaluation tools allowing users to add encroachments to floodways in 2D, discretize the analysis into separate zones, and easily compare encroachment scenarios to base results. | Tichansky, Eric; Ackerman, Cameron | Modeling, Stormwater, Technology | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 11/7/2024 | Iowa Silver Jackets, Iowa Office of Levee Safety, & National Levee Safety Program 3-day Levee Safety Event | Mark Newhall (Iowa Office of Levee Safety), Jason Smith (USACE, Rock Island District) and Mike Bachand (USACE, National Levee Safety Program) discussed a 3-day National Levee Safety event that was hosted by the Iowa Silver Jackets Team in February of this year in conjunction with the team’s Silver Jackets quarterly meeting. The event was an opportunity to discuss moving the nation towards a consistent set of practices for levees; brief the group on available National Levee Safety Program tools and datasets available for Iowa levee systems; discuss the newly-formed Iowa Office of Levee Safety’s goals and objectives; and to celebrate Iowa’s groundbreaking success in passing state legislation establishing a dedicated office and program for levee safety – one of the first states to do so. The event also included a tour of the Cedar Rapids Flood Risk Management System and attendance at a local Levee Safety Town Hall. | Newhall, Mark; Smith, Jason; Bachand, Mike | Levees, Event, Safety, Programs | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 10/22/2024 | FEMA’s New Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS) Rule and a Demo of the New Federal Flood Standard Support Tool (FFSST) | Jessica Eleff (FEMA) will be discussing FEMA’s Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS) Final Rule and providing an overview of FEMA’s 44 CFR Part 9 rule change, FFRMS policy, and implementation. The purpose of FFRMS is to address future and current flood risk and to ensure projects funded with taxpayer dollars last as long as intended. It accomplishes this by expanding management from the Base Flood Elevation to a higher vertical flood elevation and corresponding horizontal floodplain. Doug Marcy (NOAA) will give a demo of the new Federal Flood Standard Support Tool (FFSST), developed to support decision making and meet the floodplain review expectations of FFRMS. | Eleff, Jessica; Marcy, Doug | Flood Risk, Standard, Support | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 8/20/2024 | Oregon Silver Jackets Team’s Flood Inundation Mapping Workshop & Tabletop Exercise | In September of 2023, the Oregon Silver Jackets team and Benton County hosted a day-long workshop to review various flood inundation mapping products and to work through a series of scenarios to test the uses of the different maps. In addition to regulatory FEMA maps, communities may have access to dam safety inundation maps, new National Weather Service flood inundation maps, USACE flood inundation maps, and state and local maps, among others. Coupled with technical reports and metadata, the delivery of these products can be confusing for floodplain administrators and emergency managers alike. The Oregon Silver Jackets team, recognizing that communities are being provided an increasing number of flood mapping products through individual and unrelated initiatives, decided to prioritize the flood inundation mapping workshop and exercise. Floodplain Managers, Emergency Managers, and Engineering Staff from across the County attended, along with state and federal mapping and Silver Jackets partners. The presenters talked about this experience and share some of the lessons learned derived from the discussions. | Wright, Deanna; Lewis, Toby; Sclafani, Paul | Inundation, Workshop, Exercises | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 6/18/2024 | California Silver Jackets Flood Risk Technical Workshop: NASA LANCE Program, Model of Models, Global Flood Product Agenda, & CA’s Flood Emergency Response Information Exchange | In place of a nationally-hosted Silver Jackets monthly webinar in June, California Silver Jackets is extendied an invitation to their Flood Risk Technical Workshop, featuring flood products, tools, & models from NASA, University of Alabama – Huntington, and the CA Department of Water Resources. This was approved for 1 CEC for Certified Floodplain Managers. Many thanks to the California Silver Jackets! The purpose of this workshop was threefold: 1) Familiarize Silver Jackets partners with new tools to assist with flood risk management 2) Promote connections within Silver Jackets partner agencies 3) Identify opportunities for data to be leveraged in DWR’s Flood Emergency Response Information Exchange (FERIX) | Haile-Selassie, Samson; Hewson, Jenny; Glasscoe, Maggie; Slayback, Dan | Workshop, Model, Response | Recording |
| 5/30/2024 | Silver Jackets Spring 2024 Webinar Series: National Levee Safety Guidelines: A Significant Milestone for Improving Community Flood Resilience | The webinar discussed the National Levee Safety Guidelines, which are currently available for review. The Guidelines, the first of its kind, are a resource of best practices that help achieve nationwide consistency in improving the reliability of levees and resiliency of communities behind levees throughout the United States. With thousands of communities across the country depending on levees to reduce impacts from flooding, this is a significant milestone. Levees are designed, constructed, and managed by various entities. There has been a long-standing need to have a common reference to connect all the important practices related to levees. The guidelines provide a common framework to improve public awareness and serve as a basis for continuous dialogue and improvement of practices well into the future. | Conforti, Tammy | Levees, Guidelines, Safety | Presentation, Recording, and Transcript |
| 5/20/2024 | Silver Jackets Spring 2024 Webinar Series: NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) Drought Planning and Mitigation Tools | NOAA’s NIDIS is an integrated information system that coordinates drought monitoring, forecasting, planning, and information at federal, tribal, state, and local levels across the country. NIDIS has been developing regional Drought Early Warning Systems (DEWS) across the U.S., where networks of researchers, academics, resource managers, policymakers, and other stakeholders share information and actions that help communities cope with drought. Developing and implementing regional DEWS allows for responsiveness to particular geographic and hydrologic circumstances, as well as value-added information needs specific to stakeholders in the respective areas. They are also developing and will soon roll out a new Drought Risk and and Resilience Planning program and toolbox. See drought.gov and drought.gov/about/drought-early-warning for more information. USBR’s WaterSMART Program is an umbrella program composed of multiple Federal financial assistance opportunities aimed at increasing water supply reliability through investments and attention to local water conflicts. Through PAS, USACE provides planning level assistance to eligible non-federal partners in managing their water resources. There a two types of planning assistance offered through the PAS program: Comprehensive Plans and Technical Assistance. Nonfederal interests eligible to partner with the Corps include any State, group of States, local government, regional coalition of governmental entities, Federally-recognized Tribes and U.S. Territories. | Follingstad, Gretel; Horsburgh, Caleb; Henggeler, Jennifer | Planning, System, Drought | Presentation, Recording, and Transcript |
| 5/7/2024 | Silver Jackets Spring 2024 Webinar Series: National Water Prediction Services : A New Era for National Weather Service Visualizations and Data Services | The National Weather Service (NWS) recently deployed a new cloud-based data visualization and data services website, known as the National Water Prediction Service (NWPS). This new generation of real-time data services and visualizations represents a dramatic expansion of the actionable public information available for awareness and use during routine and extreme weather conditions. NWPS replaces the long-standing Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS) platform as the one-stop portal into NWS water prediction information. This presentation will described the new services and presented a live demonstration. | Ross, Charles | Visualization, Data, Website | Presentation, Recording, and Transcript |
| 4/29/2024 | Realtime Urban and Flash Flood Monitoring with Cameras and Data Fusion: The FloodAware Project | Urban flooding, flash flooding, and nuisance flooding are problems that increasingly threaten property and safety. Detecting, measuring, predicting, and warning about these small-scale floods requires a different approach compared with what we have used in the past for medium-to-large scale rivers. There is a need for affordable monitoring systems that can rapidly detect, record, and communicate flood data that is highly localized. Systems should also leverage the large number of existing “smart city” sensors already available in the urban environment and fuse it with other sensor systems. Northern Arizona University researchers, in coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have spent the past 5 years engineering and field-testing such a system. In this session you will get to see the product of this work – FloodAware – and hear from the developers about plans to roll out the system. | Ruddell, Ben | Flooding, System, Monitoring | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 3/20/2024 | FEMA's National Rollout of the FY23 Swift Current Funding Opportunity | Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has introduced an exciting new funding opportunity called Swift Current. Swift Current is offered under Flood Mitigation Assistance and provides funding to mitigate buildings insured through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) after a major flood-related disaster declaration, in order to reduce risk against future flood damage. A total of $300 million in funding is available under the Fiscal Year 2023 Notice of Funding Opportunity, which was made possible by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), better known as Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Funds will be made available to states, territories, and federally recognized tribal governments that receive a major disaster declaration following a flood-related disaster event and meet all other eligibility criteria. | Teltschik, Shandi | Insurance, Flood, Infrastructure | Presentation, Recording and Transcript |
| 2/27/2024 | NOAA Atlas: Planned Updates to the Nation's Precipitation Frequency Estimates | The webinar discussed plans for NOAA Atlas updates across the nation, in particular, for the development of NOAA Atlas 15. In 2022 NOAA received first-ever direct Federal funding under the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) to (1) update the NOAA Atlas 14 precipitation frequency standard, and (2) develop precipitation frequency estimates for the entire U.S. and its territories. NOAA Atlas 15 will incorporate nonstationary approaches and be derived from climate model outputs to project precipitation frequency estimates into the future. | Salas, Fernando | Precipitation Forecasting, Precipitation, Meteorology, Modeling, Atlas, Precipitation | Presentation, Recording, and Transcript |