by

Obtaining representative meteorological data for an area, properly characterizing the physical characteristics of a watershed, and accurately representing the processes internal to watersheds can be complex. Several studies are presented that simplify the steps to obtain representative weather data, characterize the topography a watershed, and use this physical characterization to build a process based snowmelt model that requires no calibration to replace a calibration dependent temperature index based model. The objective of these studies is to present a suite of computational tools and proof of concept studies that simplify watershed modeling. First we present a method to quickly and easily obtain a 32-year record of meteorological forcing data for any location in the from the freely available Climate Forecast System Reanalysis dataset. Results from this analysis indicate that the CFSR data can reliably act as a first approximation of historical weather data over a watershed. The data consisting of precipitation, temperature, and other relevant weather information. Results show that using this dataset, can be as, or more, accurate than using weather records from the closest weather stations when using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT