Some Statistics of Instantaneous Precipitation

Abstract

Known sources of data from arrays of instantaneous precipitation intensity recorders in southern Germany, east-central Illinois, northeastern Illinois, central Florida, and Hilo, Hawaii are obtained. These data are analyzed for line averages of the percent frequency of occurrence of the exceedance of selected threshold precipitation intensities. The correlation coefficients of the precipitation intensity at sites at varying distances from a reference site are determined. The decay in correlation is found to be a function of climatic region and the type of precipitation: showery or continuous. Showery rains are found to be essentially uncorrelated about 12 km from the reference site while continuous rain exhibits no correlation beyond about 50 km. Single-station intensity data collected at Urbana, Illinois; Paris, France; Inyanga, Zimbabwe; Bogor, Indonesia; Reading, United Kingdom; Island Beach, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; Franklin, North Carolina; and Majuro, Marshall Islands, are compared.