Rainfall Statistics, 2012

[TonyH]

May not be accurate but this Weston site had only 1099mm:

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IWESTONS1&day=3&year=2012&month=1&graphspan=year

[Rainy]

Manual daily gauge. Met Office observer for over 40yrs here with same kit.

2012 was a record wet one here, 1984.0mm.

I tell folks 6ft 6ins. Startles them.

We'd virtually all be drowned.

A relative near Kendal in Lake District had over 2000, but wasn't a record.

[Evening thunder]

Indeed, the calibration of my rain gauge from the factory was appauling. The most annoying thing was I had to wait 2 years collecting duplicate data with the manual gauge to be sure, fortunately I did, as the results from the Davis were useless. The factory specification says it should be +/-4% out, but through 24 months of data and using the manual 'tip test' (544ml of water dripped slowly through the funnel) I found it to be 27% out of range (at least it was consistent). Even more annoying is that the suggested method of calibration is inaccurate - one turn of the screw should be a 6% change, but its more like 15%! I finished calibrating it the other day and managed to get a figure 2% out using the 544mL water, however I still dont trust it so I doubt Ill ever stop using the manual gauge now.

Ironically the £120 Lacrosse WS2300 I used from 2005-2010 was always within 5%, so Davis have some improvements to make I think!

Interesting and that's a pretty bad result coming out the factory! I also tried to do the 'tip test' when I got this one in March (after 5 years I decided to buy a new ISS and have the old one as back-up especially as while at uni I couldn't replace any parts that go wrong quickly) and found it was under-reading by over 10%, but each tipper required a different amount of water to make it tip, and I found I could not actually adjust the screws enough to get it reading correct without each bucket being way out of sync! I decided to do a slight modification by adding a small amount of super glue to add weight to the underneath one of the tippers to get it correct, maybe not the best idea and I guess it could be the cause of some of my problems but not sure how exactly, and I assume I could remove it if I had to. Maybe I should have returned it but did not foresee the problems or feel confident I'd get a better unit.

I gave up on getting each tipper to tip with the same amount of water or getting the calibration exact and just turned the screws by 2 full turns if say it was 12% out. I corrected it but then had had it under-read again while on holiday in July when we had about 70mm in 24 hours and major flooding, and over-read other times. Anyway I recently re-calibrated it the other day as well and managed to have it read bang on with my CoCoRaHS gauge for a rainfall of 12.6mm and another of 2.4mm, but then was slightly out again on the latest rainfall (10mm when manual read 9.4mm).

Rather frustrating on the wettest year on record to say the least.

I'm pretty sure my previous ISS was more reliable, even if it did over-read by up to 10% in windy weather when the wind wobbled the pole and hence the tipping bucket tipped with slightly less water in, which I think is a bit of a weak point unless you fix it to a big sturdy wooden post or fence where the sun could heat the fence and cause slightly inflated temp readings I'd imagine.

Anyway I've probably rambled on about that enough now, a while ago I created a rainfall accumulation graph for my location which I have updated, showing how wet this year was despite the dry start:

This uses data from my old ISS without much manual correction before 2011 so may be up to a 5% over-read then overall I'd guess.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Stormmad26

[Bobby]

Anyway I've probably rambled on about that enough now, a while ago I created a rainfall accumulation graph for my location which I have updated, showing how wet this year was despite the dry start:

This uses data from my old ISS without much manual correction before 2011 so may be up to a 5% over-read then overall I'd guess.

Good idea, here's one for here also with this year and last with average

Edited January 4, 2013 by Bobby

[reef]

A similar chart for this location:

2012 was drier up until the end of March than the driest year on record locally (1864) but by the end of June was almost as wet as the wettest year (1872).

[TonyH]

2012 Rainfall anomaly map:

[Weather-history]

Wettest Decembers on record for England and Wales

193.9 1876

190.8 1914

185.6 1868

184.9 1915

183.5 1934

179.0 1929

174.5 2012

Wettest December since 1934

Wettest years on record since 1766

1284.9 1872

1247.3 1768

1244.8 2012

[Aaron]

Graph for here:

Edited January 6, 2013 by Aaron