Due to chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the quality of weather forecast generally degrades with increasing lead time. For mountainous regions, it becomes even more difficult to maintain the quality of forecasts because of complex nature of the prevailing topography such as Himalayas. In this paper, Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model output and observed precipitation data of different stations in various ranges of the western Himalayan region is used to develop a statistical

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... g model (SDM) for better rainfall predictability over the considered locations. The technique includes model output statistics utilization for developing SDM. The analysis covers two consecutive winters i.e. 2011/12 and 2012/13. The performance of the model is assessed using an independent dataset for 2013/14 winter season. Results indicate that SDM substantially improves the precipitation forecast over various locations of the western Himalayan region.