Open AccessSpatial and Temporal Characteristics of Heavy Hourly Rainfall in the United States
Author(s) -
Nathan M. Hitchens,
Harold E. Brooks,
Russ S. Schumacher
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
monthly weather review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.862
H-Index - 179
eISSN - 1520-0493
pISSN - 0027-0644
DOI - 10.1175/mwr-d-12-00297.1
Subject(s) - precipitation , environmental science , diurnal cycle , climatology , annual cycle , rain gauge , tropical cyclone rainfall forecasting , radar , meteorology , geography , geology , cyclone (programming language) , computer hardware , telecommunications , field programmable gate array , computer science
The climatology of heavy rain events from hourly precipitation observations by Brooks and Stensrud is revisited in this study using two high-resolution precipitation datasets that incorporate both gauge observations and radar estimates. Analyses show a seasonal cycle of heavy rain events originating along the Gulf Coast and expanding across the eastern two-thirds of the United States by the summer, comparing well to previous findings. The frequency of extreme events is estimated, and may provide improvements over prior results due to both the increased spatial resolution of these data and improved techniques used in the estimation. The diurnal cycle of heavy rainfall is also examined, showing distinct differences in the strength of the cycle between seasons.