Rain!

Between Friday and Saturday, we've had just over an inch of rain.  My new weather station software graphs rainfall rates, rather than cumulative precipitation – an interesting difference that I'm still getting used to.  The peak rate in this storm was about 15 hundredths of an inch (4mm) per hour.  On average, that's a light drizzle :)

That reminds me of the most intense rain Debbie and I have ever experienced.  We were just west of Hilo, up in the hills on the Big Island of Hawai'i.  We watched the storm cell approach, saw it dumping torrential rains on Hilo, and then it hit us.  I didn't have any instruments with me, but I did watch things like pots, buckets, etc. filling up.  I guessed the rate at about 4 inches (100mm) per hour, and that rate was sustained for 20 to 30 minutes.  The locals told us that this sort of rainstorm happens regularly; they didn't think of it as unusual at all!

And to validate that, I did a little googling – and discovered that the record one hour rainfall rate is 12 inches per hour.  It's a tie between Hawai'i and Missouri.  So the locals were right – the 4 inches per hour we saw was no big deal :)