Ken Cook wrote:

"Eskimo Will" wrote in message ...
Hmmm it's interesting that I had more rainfall in a day than Moulton Seasend
had in a whole month!
Very dry in the east.

Hi, Will,

Not sure just how much notice to take of many of January's precipitation
totals. There was a lot of dry, powdery snow blowing about, especially in the
east, with consequent sublimation and drifting. It will take some quality
control by the Met O before anything is decided I expect. Example here,
Vantage ProAWS, untouched, 63.0mm, MetO gauge melted only at 09Z, no other
times, each day 80.8mm, a 30% difference. I'll be interested to see what the
Copley logger Environment Agency gauge (AWS) measured. I think my rainfall
total would have been higher still if I had melted the contents of the funnel
more often the once/day. Raw AWS figures only with no manual backup would be
very suspect imho. during a snowy month, hence the need for careful quality
control. Or am I teaching grandmother with the eggs again!!

Best wishes,
Ken


Indeed, Ken, there was a great deal of very dry powdery snow drifting quite
badly. On a few days the funnels of both my 5" and AWS gauges were largely
blown clear of snow so they didn't come close to capturing what fell. If they
had captured everything, how much would have been precipitation and how much
would have been blowing snow? It's anyone's guess. There was no level depth of
snow from which to try to take a measurement of water content. Exposed areas
were blown almost completely clear of snow while any sheltered spots had a lot
of drifting. There are still some remnants of the drifts to be seen so that
gives an indication of how deep they were.

On several days the best that I could do was to make a sensible guesstimate of
the rainfall equivalent of the snowfall as there was nothing from which a
sensible measurement could be made. From the figures shown in Andy's posting it
seems that I might have underestimated the amount but we'll probably never know
for sure.

--
Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.