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That seems like an interesting book that I should go check out. Thanks for sharing.
That maps seems to show what I was getting at. The "Rainfall intensity" map on the same page is interesting too, showing the greatest intensity in southern Louisiana and Mississipi, as it would also hint that those locations are the ones with the short duration tropical-style rains. "Percent of all rainy days with one inch or more of precipitation" as shown there would actually also be a cool statistic to see city-by-city, if it was collected.
Yes it’s really an interesting book, and a good reference guide. Just as you thought, here the duration of precip is really the interesting part - not the precip itself:
Burts comparison of two cities on page 103 is a great example; Although New Orleans normally receives about 64 inches of rain a year and Seattle only 38 inches…New Orleans averages just 114 rainy days a year compared to Seattle’s 158. So while New Orleans has far fewer rainy days than Seattle, when it rains in New Orleans it rains hard. Just as he says on page 103 “ In fact, 20% of all rainy days in New Orleans net a inch or more of precipitation…while just 2% do in Seattle”. On the other hand...high latitude Seattle doesn’t have all that much precipitation annually…its only that Seattle's 38 inches is spread out over a much longer time duration with drizzly weather. When you consider that summer averages fairly dry in Seattle…you realize even more how much those 158 days mean. On the other hand in New Orleans…latitude and the weather patterns in the subtropics (esp in summer) allow for quick thunderous rains from clouds that are tall vertically, but narrow horizontally.
A quick look at the numbers you got Environment Canada for a few Canadian cities looks like it shows a geogragic reflection as well: The higher latitude spots on the West Coast of Canada (Vancouver, Rupert, BC) not only get more precip annually than Toronto (two to three times as much)…but precip days are much greater. So I would guess that Toronto and much of central Canada sees more hrs on sun in most months than points in the far western coastal areas of the country. Yet, look what happens when you get to the extreme eastern areas (Canadian Martimes-Halifax)…you pick up the effect of the middle latitude cyclones in the westerlies and their precip…and rain days shoot up. It looks like if you want sunshine – you’re in the best spot in southern Canada.
Your precipitation numbers look off. I think you quoted rainfall instead of precipitation. Maybe that was your intent? Perhaps that was what you wanted.
I put precipitation so i'd have to redo them if you want a direct comparison.
Yeah, I thought your rain days were just rainfall, but no need, I've redone it with total precipitation.
Prince Rupert, B.C 102.1 inches (2593.6) per year; 239.7 days (>= 0.2 mm); 24.2 days (>= 25 mm)
Vancouver 47.2 inches (1199 mm) per year; 166.1 days (>= 0.2 mm); 6.6 days (>= 25 mm)
Calgary 16.2 inches (412.6 mm) per year; 113.6 days (>= 0.2 mm); 1.5 days (>= 25 mm)
Medicine Hat, Alberta 13.14 inches (333.8 mm) per year; 99.3 days (>= 0.2 mm); 1.2 days (>= 25 mm)
Toronto 31.2 inches (792.7 mm) per year; 145.5 days (>= 0.2 mm); 4.6 days of rain (>= 25 mm)
Halifax 57.17 inches (1452.2 mm) per year; 171.2 days of rain (>= 0.2 mm); 15 days of rain (>= 25 mm)[/quote]
Quote:
Originally Posted by wavehunter007
It looks like if you want sunshine – you’re in the best spot in southern Canada.
Well, Toronto's got around 2000 hours, the prairies are a lot sunnier (sunniest location is Medicine hat at close to 2500), but I'd rather not trade the warm, stable summers of southern Ontario for them.
I asked a similar question a while ago with regards to night vs day rain. I felt ( here) that rainy nights might outnumber rainy days and a brief (5 weeks)period of checking the gauge(s) morning and night showed 3:1 in favor of night. The last month has also followed a similar ratio, but everything I've seen on the subject says that isn't the case over the long term. I might be imagining it because I don't get think I get enough days off work due to rain.
Here we get 1300 mm (52 inches) over 107 days. Rain tends to be heavy but can sometimes be light or drizzly.A unofficial ( govt dept though) station recorded 1200 mm(50 inches) over 2 days in the hills behind Rockville (100 km away) a couple of weeks ago. I don't know how accurate it is, but it can certainly rain over there and very heavily at that.
I was just wondering about statistical measures of raininess (partly influenced by the city climate rankings thread) and was wondering if there is a measurement that takes into account precipitation duration, rather than total amount.
This would take into account the fact that 30 mm falling over half a month in a maritime climate could be "rainier" than a single stray thunderstorm event dropping 30 mm in a dry season's otherwise rainless month in a tropical climate.
I know it'd be obviously impractical for any weather station to note the stop and start time of rainfall "events" and sum them up for the day, in minutes, hours or something, and throughout the months to give say hours per month, as cool as that may be (in an ideal world, you could also measure things like average strength of precipitation in mm per hour).
However, since weather stations usually take hourly measurements, a good stand-in could be if it was raining that hour or not.
Thus, if you checked once an hour and there was rain at least at 11:00, 12:00, 13:00, 14:00 that day, you'd put 4 "rain hours" that day.
Are there summary statistics for this kind of thing online (I haven't seen any) or any similar kind of variable that gives an idea of "duration"?. It seems like it'd be a useful measure.
Check this out. It's for the Western U.S. There might be a Canadian equivalent but I havent found it yet. Yakutat, AK sounds like a particularly dismal place:
There are places on Chile's south coast where rainfall hours might approach 3000 but that is an awful lot of raininess and I am not sure their Met Office even tracks that.
Where did you get all these from? I'd looked for rain duration stats online (I knew these figures were kept somewhere) but couldn't find anything! The numbers sound more or less what I'd expected, though the Galway one seems a bit shocking. Aberdeen looks bad too for its relatively low rainfall totals. A while back I posted a thread comparing the hours of sunshine with hours/totals of rainfall for Hampstead to see how it compared with other sites represented by posters on here, but got no replies.
Do you know which site has the least/most rain hours in the country (I'm guessing somewhere like Cambridge/Fort William)? I'd be interested to see if some of these Scottish Highland sites have more rain hours than sunshine hours.
Where did you get all these from? I'd looked for rain duration stats online (I knew these figures were kept somewhere) but couldn't find anything! The numbers sound more or less what I'd expected, though the Galway one seems a bit shocking. Aberdeen looks bad too for its relatively low rainfall totals. A while back I posted a thread comparing the hours of sunshine with hours/totals of rainfall for Hampstead to see how it compared with other sites represented by posters on here, but got no replies.
Do you know which site has the least/most rain hours in the country (I'm guessing somewhere like Cambridge/Fort William)? I'd be interested to see if some of these Scottish Highland sites have more rain hours than sunshine hours.
Just an old weather book of mine, the averages are only 1951-1960, so a bit out of date. Wettest site given is Loch Sloy with 1422 hours, so probably more than sun hours, and Eskdalemuir with 1186hours, or a similar amount to sunshine. Kew is the lowest given, Folkstone and Hove are both higher, Cambridge isnt given.
Click Precipitation, then mean number of days with measurable precipitation
That's not quite the same thing, though. An hour of rain in the evening is different from drizzle all day long.
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Where did you get all these from? I'd looked for rain duration stats online (I knew these figures were kept somewhere) but couldn't find anything! The numbers sound more or less what I'd expected, though the Galway one seems a bit shocking. Aberdeen looks bad too for its relatively low rainfall totals. A while back I posted a thread comparing the hours of sunshine with hours/totals of rainfall for Hampstead to see how it compared with other sites represented by posters on here, but got no replies.
