IEM Daily Feature
Friday, 01 November 2013

Coverage and Amount

Posted: 01 Nov 2013 05:36 AM


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Significant rains fell over the past two days primarily over southeastern Iowa with totals over two inches in areas. The statewide averaged total estimated by the IEM for Wednesday was just over an half inch, but not all of the state saw rain. The featured chart presents the frequency of areal coverage of precipitation to total amount for four months of the year. The colors represent a relative frequency with reds being the most common. You can see the most frequent areas slightly differ by month with July around 15%, April and October around 30% and January a bit more spread out. July is dominated by smaller scale storms than the other month, so their coverage tends to be less. Storms systems are much larger in January, so precipitation tends to be smeared out over larger areas. Rainfall intensities are higher in July. So as the coverage increases, the amount increases as well. This also means that widespread, light rainfall events are not common in July.

Voting:
Good = 123
Bad = 21
Abstain = 15

Tags:   precip