Droughts, highly uncertain forecasts, and competition for limited supply are persistent management challenges within the Klamath River Basin. As a result, the Bureau of Reclamation is subject to a recurring cycle of litigation and reanalysis over stakeholder’s seasonal supply allocations. This drives the need for Reclamation to a) improve forecasts’ skill and b) develop a more flexible and transparent operations management tool. Our research addresses the need for a better operations management tool by utilizing a widely used hydro policy model software, RiverWare, to build one. The design is based on Reclamation’s defined functional requirements. Additionally, features are incorporated that improve the user experience through intuitive run and output management. As for improving forecasts’ skill, our research investigates potentially informative climate teleconnections and alternative regression methods to reduce uncertainty. These are sea surface temperature anomaly and 700 hectopascal geopotential height signals and local polynomial and random forest regression respectively. The outcome is a climate informed version of the existing forecast that effectively reduces error at January through March lead times. The practical value of these forecasts is assessed by integrating them into operational projections. Resultant projections of competing agricultural, environmental, and flood control uses of supply have a meaningfully smaller range of error, therefore, advocating for their application.</p
