Reporting Rain: The Home Version

The rain we saw over the March 25-27 timeframe was a little unusual for us in one respect; the shield of rain was relatively widespread, with little in the way of stormy weather to focus any areas of heavier rain.  So rain totals were pretty consistent across the region, and the chances of having a large difference in rain over a small distance were very low.

Quite often, especially when we’re dealing with thunderstorms, our rainfall becomes very uneven.  Particularly when we see those summer-time “pop-up” storms, just a couple of miles can make a difference between an inch or more of rain or getting nothing at all.

Differences can become much larger in the mountains, where the effects of terrain will lead to some more favored areas for rain.

This has consequences in reporting rain totals.  If we say, for example, that Greenville picked up 1.5” of rain, but your rain gauge is not near the downtown airport, your totals may be much different.

This also makes a difference in reporting drought conditions: there will be areas in the Upstate that will be better off, and worse off, than the “official” reporting station at the Greenville/Spartanburg Airport. 

Well, you can make a difference.  First, you can let us know about what you’ve been seeing weather-wise, be it rainfall or anything else, by dropping us an email at .  The entire department has access to this mailbox, so there’s no need to worry about sending to different emails based on whose shift it is in the weather office.  Second, you can be a part of a larger rain report network called CoCoRaHS.  I won’t go into the details of what that name means here; you can check out the website at http://www.cocorahs.org to learn more and to learn about how to get involved.