Tony Powell wrote:

In uk.sci.weather on Sun, 22 Oct 2006, Graham Easterling
wrote :

32mm of rain in Penzance 11:15-12:15. A30 flooded at the entrance to
Penzance (just passable)


Hi Graham,

Are you sure your raingauge is accurate, you must have imagined that figure.

The official highest 1800-1800 total was a mere 26mm according to Ceefax
page 407 who get their totals from the MO


If you look at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/...yesterday.html the wettest
place saw 64.8mm (never rely on Ceefax) The same page shows Camborne
with 22mm, Scilly 23mm, but they both missed the intense rainfall.
There are so few MetO stations now that they manage to miss just about
everything outside of the SE. Going by the amount of flooding, I would
be very surprise if the area just west of St Ives on the north coast
didn't exceed 50mm. There were white rainfall echos there.

In the past I've checked my figures against the EA gauge at Drift (2
miles away - same altitude) Over a 10 year period my total rainfall was
98% of that recorded at Drift, so it seems OK.

Interestingly, since the start of autumn I have unofficially been wetter
than the official wettest in the whole of the country on two occasions. On
13th September, I achieved 45mm (1800-1800 13/14th) and Brize Norton was
awarded the max with just 39mm. The second occasion was on Friday 20th
October (1800-1800 19/20th) when I achieved 37mm and Lyneham got the award
this time with 33mm.

I lived in Wootton Bassett for a while, and whilst there recorded my
heaviest ever rainfall - 91mm in 2 hours. Just 3mm fell at Lyneham, but
94mm just up the road at Purton. I had a visitation from the Met
Office, and this was included in their Hydrological Bulletin

"2nd June 1982 - 90.2mm bewtween 18:00 & 20:00 GMT at Wootton Bassett
caused damage and extensive flooding."

They also supplied me with sattalite images of the storm, a novelty in
thos days.


It's got me thinking how many times a year is it that
each day is under-recorded in this manner. Obviously, there will always be
these situations (can't have sites everywhere) but if we're going to
understand the climate, we need to get it right.

Any thoughts?

The MetO seem to have given up on a decent network of recording
stations.

Graham
Penzance