Victoria Sankovich Bahls

Victoria Sankovich Bahls specializes in the development of hydrometeorological inputs to compute flood frequency information for hydrologic hazard risk-based assessments, including precipitation-frequency analyses and spatio-temporal storm reconstructions. She also conducts site-specific storm-based probable maximum precipitation (PMP) deterministic studies for probable maximum flood (PMF) calculations. For both the probabilistic and deterministic precipitation evaluations, she has incorporated methodologies to climate-adjust the hydrometeorological model input parameters to test the sensitivity of hydrologic projects to potential future climate conditions.

Recently, Ms. Bahls was the project manager and senior hydrometeorologist for the Regional Precipitation-Frequency Analysis for British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations, and Rural Development. With MGS Engineering, she developed gridded point precipitation-frequency estimations with uncertainty bounds at the 24-, 48-, 72-, and 96-hour durations at annual exceedance probabilities from the common 1:2-year events to the extreme 1:1,000,000-year events using L-Moments regional statistics. The results increased the efficiency, improved the quality, and lowered the cost of hydrotechnical studies related to dams, spillways, dikes, and river crossings (bridges and culverts) in the province by supplementing observed hydrology and hydrometeorological data.

Ms. Bahls joined RTI in 2022. Prior to joining RTI, she worked in both the public and private sectors. Ms. Bahls worked at the Bureau of Reclamation where she developed meteorological inputs to hydrologic models for Reclamation dams. She created spatio-temporal storm patterns, calculated PMP, and incorporated climate change into dam safety applications. In the private sector, Ms. Bahls worked for both MetStat and DTN as a senior hydrometeorologist and project manager. Her primary focus was communications and collaboration between hydrometeorologists and water resource engineers to support hydrologic hazard analyses for dam safety applications.