Surface soil moisture has great impact on both meso- and microscale atmospheric processes, especially on severe local convection processes and on the dynamics of short-lived torrential rains. To promote the performance of the land surface model (LSM) in surface soil moisture simulations, a hybrid hydrologic runoff parameterization scheme based upon the essential modeling theories of the Xin'anjiang model and Topography based hydrological Model (TOPMODEL) was developed in preference to the simple water balance model (SWB) in the Noah LSM. Using a strategy for coupling and integrating this modified Noah LSM to the Global/Regional Assimilation and Prediction System (GRAPES) analogous to that used with the standard Noah LSM, a simulation of atmosphere-land surface interactions for a torrential event during 2007 in Shandong was attempted. The results suggested that the surface, 10-cm depth soil moisture simulated by GRAPES using the modified hydrologic approach agrees well with the observations. Improvements from the simulated results were found, especially over eastern Shandong. The simulated results, compared with the products of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) soil moisture datasets, indicated a consistent spatial pattern over all of China. The temporal variation of surface soil moisture was validated with the data at an observation station, also demonstrated that GRAPES with modified Noah LSM exhibits a more reasonable response to precipitation events, even though biases and systematic trends may still exist.