On Monday, February 10, 2014 11:10:21 AM UTC, exmetman wrote:
Hi



As you I do a blog a bit (but the doctor says it'll be alright if I keep taking the tablets) and a blog I wrote yesterday's about the occurrence of extreme rainfall events in the UK, I presented some evidence that the number of events showed a slight increase since 1931 in England & Wales. Someone disputed this finding, saying that the values in the UKP data that I used were over too large an area, and that any of the more 'local' extreme events would be averaged out.



I was just wondering if any of you, who have been keeping rainfall data for years, have noticed an increase in the number of days when you had more than an inch of rain (and that's 2 inch if you live on Dartmoor)?



Obviously the longer the record you have the better, and in that regard I've just contacted the Met Office to see if they can help me with some daily totals for a few sites to see what they show.



I know we have the UKMO WOW site for current weather, but that doesn't help much with climate data from the past.



It does make me wonder what George James Symons, the founder of the British Rainfall Organisation would do with the amazing possibilities that the internet offer in unifying a network of rainfall observers across the country.



Bruce.

You might want to consider looking into the rainfall figures recorded in the annual publications of the Transactions of the Devonshire Association. These go back at least until the latter part of the 19th C. Some editions are available via Google Books, but for the most part you will need to need to travel to a library that hold a complete run (Exeter, Plymouth?)

D. W.