This summer has seen extremes for lack of rainfall over the southern plains and daily rainfall totals. The featured chart is of one minute interval data from New York City's JFK Airport showing a rainfall total of 7.8 inches on Sunday. While this was the largest daily rainfall total for the airport site, it is not clear if this was the largest total for New York City as the official site is at Central Park.

Voting:
Good = 13
Bad = 4

Tags:   rain   record  

Just a few days ago, the Chicago O'Hare weather sensor set a local record for daily rainfall total. This time it is Dubuque's turn. The featured chart displays the one minute interval precipitation data from the Dubuque Airport weather sensor. The hourly rainfall rates are presented looking over various windows of time. On a minute by minute basis, the extrapolated hourly rates exceeded 10 inches per hour (0.19 inches in one minute)! Needless to say, this amount of intense rainfall caused a lot of problems in the area. Other (non-official) weather sensors in the area reported upwards of 14 inches of rain from this event!

Voting:
Good = 42
Bad = 11

Tags:   rain   record  

Our atmosphere has been loaded with water recently. When storms form in this environment, they can become very efficient rain producers and dump extreme amounts of precipitation quickly. During just Saturday morning, the weather sensor at the Chicago O'Hare Airport recorded their largest daily rainfall total on record. The featured chart presents the one minute interval precipitation data from the weather sensor and shows computed rainfall rates measured over various intervals of time. The rates over 1 and 15 minute intervals are extrapolated out over the hour for comparison. The actual hourly rates are shown in red. For a minute by minute basis, rainfall rates once exceeded 8 inches per hour (0.14 inches reported in one minute)!

Voting:
Good = 23
Bad = 8

Tags:   rain   record  

The featured graph is a time series of one minute interval precipitation rates and totals from the Lamoni SchoolNet station on Saturday morning. The red line shows an accumulated total of over 5 inches before noon with over two of those inches falling within an hour between midnight and 1 AM. The other two lines represent hourly accumulation rates based on two different time windows. On a 15 minute interval, rainfall rates exceeded 4 inches per hour, which is an extreme rate for Iowa. These rates were possible thanks to a saturated atmosphere with warm cloud temperatures.

Voting:
Good = 27
Bad = 6

Tags:   rain  

A frontal boundary is helping to maintain an area of showers over Iowa this fine Tuesday morning with some select locales expected to pick up around an inch of rainfall. How common is it to get an inch of rain in one day in October? The featured graph shows the frequency of getting an inch plus rainfall observeration somewhere in the state based on the past 57 years of data. Values for October are around 20%, which would roughly be once every 5 years on a daily basis.

Voting:
Good = 26
Bad = 9

Tags:   rain