Hilary McMillan

How about some real actual hydrology? 🌊
West Kettle River near Rhone
Sep 2 2021 ~ 0.53 m3/s typical late season low flow
Apr 20 2025 ~53 m3/s ramping up to Q2 at start of freshet

Thank you for featuring our paper, and for all your work on Hydrology Paper of the Day!

Hydrology Paper of the Day @iflscience.com on weird hydrology: rivers that flow in different drainage basins; why some rivers flow in two directions or have a reversed direction of flow; a lake that drains into two oceans; river capture and geological controls; modelling; and management challenges.

Panta Rhei: a decade of progress in research on change in hydrology and society To better understand the increasing human impact on the water cycle and the feedbacks between hydrology and society, the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) organized the scie...

OUT NOW: A fantastic new read for hydrologists 📚: a wrap-up of the Panta Rhei scientific decade of @iahs-aish.bsky.social. Between 2013 and 2022, it explored links between changes in hydrology and society. 🌍 In this paper, Heidi Kreibich and her colleagues present ten years of progress. 👇

GitHub - RY4GIT/perceptual-models: Repository for the perceptual model database and interactive map Repository for the perceptual model database and interactive map - RY4GIT/perceptual-models

Yes! Find the link to the interactive map at github.com/RY4GIT/perce.... CUAHSI is making a new map with download capability at hydroprocess.cuahsi.io, but there are still a few teething troubles so you can also see our legacy GIS map (same info, no download) sdsugeo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboa...

Climate and landscape drive catchment hydrological processes at the global scale - Nature Water Understanding catchment hydrological functioning across the world is critical to providing theoretical support for large-domain model applications. A global assessment of catchment perceptual models r...

Accompanied by an excellent commentary from Daniele Penna, www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Global patterns in observed hydrologic processes - Nature Water This study presents a global, searchable database of 400 research watersheds with published descriptions of dominant hydrologic flow pathways, supporting efficient hypothesis testing to investigate em...

New paper! After much work by me and my students we created a global database of hundreds of research watersheds, and perceptual models of their hydrologic processes. We use the data to test classic theories on how climate and landscape control dominant processes. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Today we were in the Re della Pietra #catchment
danielepenna.wixsite.com/redellapietra.
We installed a new #weather station and showed the site to some private #stakeholders.

And this little paper came out right today.
rdcu.be/efM8w
Congrats @mcmillanhydro.bsky.social and coauthors!

Thank you John for highlighting our work!

Quantifying Sources, Sinks and Mitigation of Macroplastic and Other River Debris: A Trash Balance Model We developed a holistic model of riverine macroplastic and debris sources, sinks and transport dynamics for urban rivers Much more debris is directly deposited on the floodplain by dumping and ab...

Where does macroplastic pollution in rivers come from? In urban San Diego, most is dumped directly in the river corridor. Volunteer clean up efforts are essential, but plastic stored in the river keeps increasing. Paper from MS student TJ Palmer agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Hope to see CSU students at this meeting! I will be attending alongside graduate students from SDSU Geography

A First-Time Attendee’s Guide to the 2025 Catchment Science Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) and Conference (GRC) Written by Ally Jacoby When I first heard the Gordon Research Conference on Catchment Science described as ‘hydrology summer camp’, I was immediately sold on going. I attended for the first time in…

Are you a graduate student or postdoc interested in the GRS/GRC Catchment hydrology conferences this June? GRS Chair Ally Jacoby has just published this first-time attendees guide! younghs.com/2025/03/03/a...

Hydrology Paper of the Day @rarakihydro.bsky.social on how soil moisture metrics and observations improve the outputs of a rainfall-runoff model: evaluation of model performance with hydrologic signatures; application to watersheds in New Zealand and the US; partitioning; and calibration.

Talk abstracts for Catchment Science Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) before GRC are due on 3/15/25. Submit early for a talk! Exciting venue for science + networking for early careers!

Keynote speaker Dr Ryan Emanuel on Environmental Justice. @waterpotential.bsky.social

www.grc.org/catchment-sc...

I'm really looking forward to this talk!

This was also my first time bringing students to this meeting and they had an amazing time feeling welcomed by the field and getting to meet other senior scientists. I am already excited for next time.”

“This is my absolute favorite conference and this year was amazing - incredible set of talks and a great way to re-energize about my science and network after COVID. [cont]

The research discussed was cutting edge and diverse but presented in a way so that scientists of all niches could understand.”

See these quotes from last time: “This was the best conference I have ever been to. I have never been able to get to know so many other scientists so well and have such stimulating discussion and great feedback on my research. [cont]

Poster advertising GRC Catchment Science Conference, dates 22-27 June 2025, and accompanying GRS conference for Young Researchers 21-22 June 2025.

Remember to apply and register for this summer's Catchment Science GRC! The best conference you'll ever go to. Deadlines coming up on March 16 for graduate students to submit their oral abstracts to the GRS.
www.grc.org/catchment-sc...

My 1st PhD chapter is (finally) out! 🥳

We have tested soil moisture as an objective metric in a Next-Gen rainfall-runoff model—a Conceptual Functional Equivalent (CFE) of WRF-Hydro.

Thank you my mentor @mcmillanhydro.bsky.social and Dr. Fred Ogden for their guidance!

doi.org/10.1111/1752...

New Predictors for Hydrologic Signatures: Wetlands and Geologic Age Across Continental Scales This article contributes to the longstanding effort to use landscape metrics to predict streamflow dynamics. We introduce two new metrics describing wetlands and geologic age and use random forests t....

Amongst all of this, our students are still publishing excellent papers. My recent Masters student Annie Holt, now at NWS, shows how geologic age and (region-dependent) wetland fraction metrics can be used to improve our predictions of baseflow in watersheds across the U.S.: doi.org/10.1002/hyp....

Drivers and Buffers of Stream Flashiness in the Mid‐Atlantic United States In this study, we investigated flashiness across 195 Mid-Atlantic sites, each within one of seven different physiographic regions. Our findings identified several drivers and buffers of flashiness, e...

A little bit delayed, but I hear it's picking up over here so sending this out into the world: our Lafayette team including Rachel Hurley (now grad student at WPI), Dave Brandes, and me put out this piece on flashiness across the Mid-Atlantic: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Thank you @kinarnicholas.bsky.social for featuring our paper!

Thanks for your interest. Yes, here we are looking at rivers rather than lakes or oceans

Heads up for the Weather Community!

You can now find NOAA (@noaa.gov), NOAA Climate (@climate.noaa.gov) & NWS HQ (@nws.noaa.gov; still being set up) on Bluesky!

Advancing the science of headwater streamflow for global water protection - Nature Water Despite their substantial contributions to watershed resilience, headwater streams are becoming increasingly imperilled. This Perspective summarizes the status of headwater streamflow information and ...

Interested in headwater streams? Headwaters make up 77% of global river networks, but have fewer gauges, less accurate models and lesser protections than large rivers. See our review led by @goldenwater.bsky.social at www.nature.com/articles/s44...

A report from the 2025 Los Angeles fire apocalypse just my personal account

What it has been like, living a few blocks away from the devastated area.

Advancing the science of headwater streamflow for global water protection - Nature Water Despite their substantial contributions to watershed resilience, headwater streams are becoming increasingly imperilled. This Perspective summarizes the status of headwater streamflow information and ...

An incredible group of scientists and colleagues joined forces to support improved data, modeling, and analyses of headwater streamflow to improve surface water protections globally. Check out our paper, hot off the presses, in @naturewaterjnl.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

R u a female ECR (MSc, PhD, postdoc)? We offer Visiting Fellowships in Hydrology/Ecohydrology in my research group in Berlin, Germany on hydrological/ ecohydrological topics: www.igb-berlin.de/tetzlaff
Fellowships 2000€ for 2-4 wks. Send letter of motivation & CV to abteilungsleitung1@igb-berlin.de