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Old March 1st 18, 08:24 PM posted to uk.sci.weather
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Default Why only a trace?

On Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 10:21:42 AM UTC, Norman Lynagh wrote:
Graham Easterling wrote:

On Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 9:57:57 AM UTC,
wrote:
Why is seemingly the whole country reporting only a trace of
rainfall, or even none at all? I had 7.1mm in the 24 hours to 0900
this morning, with 13cm of snow lying.

Ian Bingham,
Inchmarlo, Aberdeenshire.
80m asl.


It's because humans are now largely redundant in the system.

That's progress!

Graham
Penzance


Even a manual rain gauge is of no use in the sort of conditions we have
here this morning. The funnel fills to the brim with falling snow and
drifting snow then anything further just blows off. There's no 'level'
snow from which to calculate a probable rainfall equivalent. This
morning I simply gave a sensible estimate based on the amount of
precipitation that I observed. It might be an accurate estimate or it
may not but it's the best I can do. The last tip of the AWS bucket was
at 1540z on 27th Feb. Some sunshine that afternoon had caused a little
melting of the snow in the funnel.

--
Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.
https://peakdistrictweather.org
Twitter: @TideswellWeathr

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I had 2.6 mm in my 5 inch funnel when I melted the snow yesterday.
Difficult to judge level snow but it was at least 10 cm in my garden which could equate with about 8 mm. (1 foot snow=1 inch rain in old money).
Today has been hopeless with the gale force wind. Very little in the funnel.
So measuring precipitation in these conditions is really a busted flush.

Len
Wembury, SW Devon