Re: [gardeners] Annual rainfall
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Mon, 06 Jan 2003 07:02:44 -0600
You know what Mark Twain said about statistics Olin. "There's lies,
there's damned lies, and then there's statistics." My sociology BS
taught me to me leary of statistics completely, particularly political
stats.
Usually rainfall stats are gathered at one central point in each area,
leaving out the fact that rainfall over such a large area can be highly
variable.
Having said that I would willingly trade you some of our rain for some
sunshine.
George
olin wrote:
>
> Actually, the official total at the Phoenix Encanto site was 4.18 inches in
> 2002. Yuma county's annual ranged all the way from 0.04 to 0.20 inches.
> Check the sites at
> http://ag.arizona.edu/azmet/azdata.htm
> You need to add up the monthly totals to get the annual total.
>
> I once ran a least squares trend line using the raw data to see if we are
> really drying up. A snapshot of the most recent 10 year period shows a
> negative slope of about 0.4 inches per year for my area which suggests a
> decline to zero inches in about 20 years. Pretty scary.
> But if I consider all of the data on record, then toss out the years that
> were 40 % above the average and 40 % below the average, the trend line is
> pretty flat. Suggests any predictions from statistical data need to be
> explained.
>
> Olin
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "GizmoAZ" <gizmoaz@cox.net>
> > Quite amazing compared to our 7 inches of average rainfall per year. We
> > would be floating away if we had 21.45 inches of rain in one month. The
> > ground here doesn't seem able to soak it in that fast.