Thirteen engineers from Turkey and one official from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) arrived at the Hydrologic Research Center (HRC) in San Diego on 6 August 2018 to participate in a three-week hands-on training workshop of the riverine routing and urban flash flood functionalities of the Flash Flood Guidance system. Turkey representatives were from the General Directorate of Water Management Flood Forecast and Early Warning Center, the State Water Hydraulics and Works (DSI), the Turkish State Meteorological Service (TSMS) Hydrometeorology Division,  TSMS Trabzon Regional Forecasting Center, TSMS İstanbul Regional Forecasting Center,  İstanbul Disaster Coordination Center (AKOM), and from the Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration of Turkey.  The WMO representative was from the Climate and Water Department, Hydrological Forecasting and Water Resources Division.

The objective of the workshop is to train operational hydro-meteorological forecasters in (1) the effective and reliable use of the system products for producing operational flash flood warnings and (2) the system component uncertainties and associated product adjustments necessary in forecast/warning operations. Hands-on training was conducted with exercises of historical and real-time flash flood case studies, quality control and bias adjustment of remotely sensed data, parametric sensitivity analysis of the system soil water accounting model and system products through a specifically designed graphical user interface. With the completion of the training program, the participants have learned the techniques to effectively navigate through the system graphical user interface to gather both historical information and forecast of precipitation, soil saturation and flow. Moreover, they have also acquired the knowledge to accurately interpret the system products for operational flash flood warnings.