On Wed, 22 May 2019 21:55:15 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 5/22/2019 11:19 AM, Rod Speed wrote:


"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.

Doesn’t 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 don’t get tornados here. We do get cyclones, but we don’t 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.

I kinda' figured likely scenario. US High Plains and towards the
SouthEast is pretty much unique in the frequency of tornadoes and truly
severe t-storms w/ gigantic hail.

The cyclone is a hurricane in the Northern and Western
hemispheres...same thing, different name. We have the occasional near
or low-grade hurricane depth low pressure systems with associated winds
on the rare occasion as well -- once in 5-10 yr or so, maybe. Often
when they do come it's late winter very early spring and will be a doozy
of a blizzard. One actually occurred early March this year with 75-85
mph sustained winds and snow...not a great event with cattle out on
wheat pasture.

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 don’t 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 that’s 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.

They're getting it again tomorrow just east of us -- 2-4" more on places
with a foot or more in last two weeks with some localized areas
predicting another 3-6". We're on the western edge of the severe
weather watch zone for this round so we'll just have to "hide and
watch"...supposed to be moving cows/calves to summer pasture in the
morning; may be interesting exercise.
I was talking to a trucker who just came up from Texas a week or two
ago - said he was running through 2 feet of water on the interstate
(on the one lane that was open) and the feilds were all under a few
feet of water. Can't remember where it was in Texas - but there was no
(functional) drainage system. He said it looked like it would be
August before it would dry out enough to plant - if it DIDN'T rain
again this week - - - -