Abstract: | In the Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS‐CN) method, the three levels of antecedent moisture condition (AMC) permit unreasonable sudden jumps in curve numbers, which result into corresponding jumps in the estimated runoff. A few recently developed SCS‐CN‐based models obviate this problem, yet they have several limitations. In this study, such a model incorporating a continuous function for antecedent moisture has been presented. It has several advantages over the other existing SCS‐CN‐based models. Its application to a large dataset from US watersheds showed to perform better than the existing SCS‐CN method and the others based on it. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |