Rainfall summary

Here's the rainfall I've recorded to date for this season in my back yard.

Date Amount Total
4-Oct 0.00 0.001
2-Nov 0.08 0.076
4-Nov 0.71 0.786
27-Nov 0.93 1.716
15-Dec 1.52 3.236
18-Dec 0.40 3.636
24-Dec 0.25 3.886
25-Dec 0.09 3.976
23-Jan 0.20 4.176
24-Jan 0.15 4.326
6-Feb 0.70 5.026
7-Feb 0.40 5.426
9-Feb 0.23 5.656
15-Feb 0.24 5.896
16-Feb 1.20 7.096
17-Feb 0.74 7.836
18-Feb 0.08 7.916

And here's how it compares with the last few years of rainfall in my back yard.



I compare my rainfall figures against historic rainfall data for Los Angeles which I found at NOAA. I don't actually live in Los Angeles but I'm near enough that I've made the comparison with rainfall figures for several years now without thinking too much about it. However, I recently went looking for correlation between my rainfall and LA's official rainfall.

Here's the correlation of total rainfall for winter 2004-5 through winter 2008-09 (through January).

It's remarkably linear - more so than I expected. I do find it very odd that when I have no rain, that the correlation predicts LA will report about 2.3 inches. Perhaps they are sensitive to heavy fog and light rains that I can't really measure effectively. I've been wrong before, but it seems doubtful that over a wet season those could add up to as much as 2.3 inches.