Thursday, January 2, 2014

DRY AND WET DAYS IN 2011, 2012, AND 2013

Dry And Wet Days In 2011, 2012, And 2013

Donald A. Windsor

In 2013 we had 3 wet days for every 2 dry days.

I live in the City of Norwich and define a wet day as any kind of aqueous precipitation within a 24-hour day.  That is, a sunny day can still be a wet day if we had snow flakes at 2:00 in the morning.

I started recording these data back in November 2010 because it seemed as if I could never get several dry days in a row.  Sure enough, we were actually getting a wet day for every dry day.

Here are my data for the past 3 years.

2011  DRY   WET

JAN   13   18
FEB   15   13
MAR   17   13   1 day unknown
APR   11   19  
MAY   11   20
JUN   20   10
JUL   21   10
AUG   17   14
SEP   15   14   1 day unknown
OCT   16   15
NOV   19   11
DEC   14   17

SUM= 189  174     DRY = 52.1%   WET = 47.9%

2012   DRY   WET

JAN   10   21
FEB   12   17
MAR   18   13
APR   18   12
MAY   16   15
JUN   16   14
JUL   18   13
AUG   21   10
SEP   20   10
OCT   12   19
NOV   16   14
DEC   11   20

SUM= 188  178     DRY = 51.4%   WET = 48.6%

2013   DRY   WET

JAN    6   13   12 days were unknown because I was away.
FEB    5   23
MAR    8   23
APR   12   18
MAY   16   15
JUN   12   18
JUL   15   16
AUG   19   12
SEP   18   12
OCT   18   13
NOV   10   20
DEC    6   25

SUM= 145  208     DRY = 41.1%   WET = 58.9%

The data show that 2011 and 2012 had about 1 dry day for each wet day.  However, 2013 was much wetter, 2 dry days for every 3 wet days.  What will 2014 look like?  Stay tuned.

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