"dpb" wrote in message ...
On 5/8/2019 5:42 PM, Rod Speed wrote:
dpb wrote
...

Out of curiosity, what's your average annual rainfall?

400mm

We're about 18";

Bit higher than ours, but not by much.

it goes up noticeably every 30 mi east and down heading west until E CO
and NM are in 10" range.

Doesnt vary that quickly here.

The Rocky Mtns create the "rain shield" from the westerlies

There's nothing for thousands of miles here.

and we're too far N and W from the Gulf of Mexico for moisture transport
to reliably get to us...

Ours mostly comes from the far NW coast
of australia, thousands of miles away.

Having been through a round of rough weather last several days got me
wondering -- you get yours from thunderstorms with hail, tornado threats
as is so much of ours or does it "just rain"?

We dont get tornados here. We do get cyclones, but we dont get
those in my part of the country, the SE corner, we only get those in
the top half of the country. They are a completely different weather
phenomenon to a tornado. You do get something similar in the
south of your country and further south in the bahamas etc too.

We do get very heavy downpours at times, not just steady rain.

We did miss the heavy stuff this go-round; nearest tornadoes about 30
miles east; did get almost 1.5" rain; central part of state is flooded
with as much as 8-10" over a week to 10-day period.

We dont normally get that much in that sort of time, rarely more
than say 5" in this part of the country. Can be much higher than
that in the top half of the country and thats always with a cyclone.

There's occasionally some advantage to being farther west nearer the rain
shield, too...

There is no rain shield here, much too flat for that.