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Precipitation events in the south‐east United States of America
Author(s) -
Robinson Peter J.,
Henderson Keith G.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.3370120704
Subject(s) - precipitation , climatology , environmental science , storm , convective storm detection , period (music) , atmospheric sciences , geography , meteorology , geology , physics , acoustics
A precipitation event climatology is defined as the frequency distributions of the number, duration, and precipitation amounts of individual rainfall events at an observing station. A preliminary analysis of hourly precipitation records for 27 stations in the south‐east United States of America for the 1958–1987 period indicates that the operational definition of an event is a period of continuously recorded precipitation separated from other such periods by a dry interval of 2 h or more. The choice of the 2‐h separation interval influences the climatological frequency distributions slightly, but maintains a distinction between convective and cyclonic systems. All south‐eastern stations displayed similar results, the average number of events varying from near 30 in autumn to about 40 in summer. Most events lasted less than 3 h and gave less than 0.2 in. of precipitation. The seasonal and spatial variations in results suggest close connections between the event climatology and the atmospheric circulation. Short‐duration storms suggestive of convective activity dominated in all seasons in Florida. To the north the winter maximum in durations and amounts indicated the importance of depression passage, while increased durations in all seasons over the Appalachian mountains reflected a topographic influence. A general region‐wide relationship between the number of events per season, the seasonal total precipitation, and the seasonal number of rain days was obtained, but the results varied greatly from station to station.