HEC-HMS Exercises

About this course

** All videos are downloadable ** Put your HEC-HMS knowledge into practice with this hands-on exercise series, designed to complement and extend the concepts introduced in the HEC-HMS Lessons course. In this companion course, you’ll move beyond individual methods and step-by-step tutorials to work through complete hydrologic modeling scenarios that integrate precipitation, losses, transforms, baseflow, routing, snowmelt, and reservoir elements into fully functioning watershed models. Each exercise emphasizes practical application—building, calibrating, and analyzing simulations that reflect real-world hydrologic systems and study workflows.You’ll experiment with multiple precipitation methods including gage weighting, gridded data, inverse distance, and interpolation, as well as explore advanced tools for importing, normalizing, and validating MRMS, PRISM, and NOAA Atlas 14 datasets. Exercises also cover loss estimation methods from Initial and Constant to Green-Ampt and Deficit approaches, alongside parameter optimization using simplex, expression calculators, and regional estimation techniques. Transform and routing scenarios include Clark, ModClark, lag, Muskingum, Muskingum-Cunge, and diffusion wave methods, paired with baseflow, reservoir, and storage-discharge curve applications.Beyond rainfall-runoff simulation, you’ll practice with snowmelt and sediment transport methods, apply depth-area reduction techniques, and use temporal patterns to build hypothetical storm events. The course also introduces terrain processing workflows in QGIS, parameter regionalization, and calibration at gage locations, helping you connect conceptual modeling to observed data. As with the lessons course, you’ll leverage HEC-HMS’s visualization and reporting tools to interpret results, but here the focus is on integration, problem-solving, and realistic applications across diverse watersheds and events.By the end of the course, you’ll have completed a wide range of end-to-end HEC-HMS exercises and de