"Martin Rowley" wrote :
"Nigel Paice" wrote:
"Martin Rowley" wrote :
Thursday, 24 August 2006
[month's precipitation so far]
Although we've still got quite a bit of the month to go, the peculiar
nature of the rainfall events wrt this station means we are still
significantly *down* on the monthly total: as of this date/time, month
total: 20.4mm / 38% of eLTA 1971-2000. ]=

You are not alone in recording low rainfall for August thus far:
Romsey (Hampshire)... 20.8mm
Wootton (Isle of Wight)... 21.9mm.

... yes, I was only pointing it out because just to the SE of us (NW
Surrey etc. - literally a local bus-ride away), the amounts will be much
higher. It will be interesting to see the maps at the end of the month if
this keeps up: there should be a tight gradient of rainfall passing
through us here in east Berkshire - you will obviously be included in the
much lower figures and where else I wonder?

Quite a wide geographical spread of sites below 20mm so far
this month:
19.8mm Hurn (some days estimated)
19.8 Chivenor
19.5 Belmullet
18.2 Baltasound
18.0 Weymouth
17.5 Boscombe Down
17.0 Thorney Island
15.7 Portland
15.2 Shoreham

compared with 176mm at Fylingdales, 146mm at Cromer,
140mm at Lowestoft, and 136mm at Wilsden (W Yorks).
West Surrey sites probably running at 124-145mm.

Problems of missing data continue to increase, and it
now seems to take 3 or 4 weeks for a u/s raingauge to
be detected and corrected in the official network. Some
gauges (eg Hurn) seem to fail on an extraordinarily regular
basis although that one is usually put right within 7 days.
During a season with periods of sporadic (i.e. thundery)
rain or lengthy periods with rain falling little but often, it
is sometimes difficult to detect when a gauge has failed.
However, it is clear that some 15% of the NCM
network failed w.r.t. rainfall (for at least 3 days,
and in one case for 32 days) at least once during the
summer - i.e. since June 1.

(c.f. thread on MO AWS network)

Philip