NOAA Rainfall

The NOAA Rainfall Method is the official peer-reviewed record of precipitation frequency estimates for the United States and affiliated territories is produced by the National Weather Service (NWS) Office of Water Prediction, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  

Note: This method may not be available for your region. For more information, refer to the Regionalization topic.

Use the controls described below to generate NOAA rainfall to be run by the analysis.

Parameters

Latitude, Longitude

Location's position as decimal values. This can be manually entered or selected by clicking the map.

Precipitation Type

Select the precipitation type of the rainfall data retrieved from the NOAA website. The options are precipitation or rainfall depth.

Note: Time Series Type: For design the use of Partial Duration is assumed.

Temporal Distribution Method

Select the temporal distribution method to use. For the NOAA Atlas 14 method, the temporal distribution data will be retrieved from the NOAA website. For the NRCS method, a series of static tables will be used to generate the temporal distribution data. Please refer to the following links for more information on NRCS temporal distribution data:

• Design Rainfall Distributions based on NOAA Atlas 14 Rainfall Depths and Durations
• NRCS Engineering Handbook Part 630, Chapter 4 Storm Rainfall Depth and Distribution
• NOAA Atlas 14 Rainfall Distributions for Ohio Valley and Neighboring States
• NOAA Atlas 14 Rainfall Distributions for Midwest and Southeast States
• Rainfall Distributions developed from NOAA Atlas 14 data

Generate Rainfall Data

Click this button to retrieve the rainfall data from the NOAA website. Please note that there are some locations that are not within a project area, if this is the case then a warning message will be shown. 

InfoDrainage retrieves rainfall data from the NOAA website in metric units (millimeters). This differs slightly from the same rainfall data retrieved in English units (inches).

Return Period (years)

A selected set of return periods are available.

Storm Durations

A set of Storm Durations and run times must be specified for the analysis to run back to back. Please note that at least one storm duration must be selected in order to retrieve NOAA temporal distribution data.

Temporal Distribution

Region

Select the primary region for the rainfall. For NOAA temporal patterns this value is retrieved from the NOAA website when generating rainfall data and is not editable. 

Distribution Area/Type

Select the distribution area for NOAA temporal patterns or the distribution type for NRCS patterns.

Quartile

Select the quartile of the duration for NOAA temporal patterns.

Percentage Of Occurrence

Select the percentage of occurrence for NOAA temporal patterns.

Generate Temporal Distribution

Retrieve the temporal distribution data from the NOAA website if using the NOAA Atlas 14 method.