Version 5.3.0 of the Community WRF-Hydro® source code is consistent with the NOAA National Water Model (NWM) v3.0 code in operations plus the following additions and fixes:

New features:

• Added impervious runoff scheme
• New new nexp spatial parameter
• Added option for Crocus snowpack/glacier model (see additional licensing terms)
• New channel option to bypass channel solver and output inflows
• New spatial snow parameters

Model physics fixes/updates:

• Array boundary fixes in channel routing
• Improved performance of nudging routines
• Correct minimum slope limit
• Corrected a situation where NaNs could be introduced in Muskingum-Cunge solver
• Moved SWE max limit to MPTABLE parameter
• Fixed energy NaNs over large snowpacks
• Miscellaneous RFC Reservoir fixes
• Moved overland roughness calculation outside of time-dependent disaggregation
• Improvements of Xinanjiang soil moisture scheme
• Added ‘scrape’ to domain edge so water doesn’t accumulate non-physically

Updated coupling infrastructure:

• Updated WRF coupling
• Updated NUOPC Cap coupling

Code-level updates that do not affect model physics:

• Removed unnecessary, harmless error messages
• Updated makefile targets to include debug, install, and test
• Removed dependency on Dask from automated tests
• Update other dependencies in testing to newest versions