This has happened to me more than once. Finding weather forecasts on the ‘net is easy. But whenever I’ve tried finding how much rainfall accumulation Rochester has had over a specific period in the past, I’ve always come up dry. ha ha ha.
Closest I ever got was a NOAA site [update: link now defunct] where the last two days’ worth of data is kept online.
It’s funny how most of the time a search engine will spit back what you want, but once in awhile you hit a combo of too much clutter plus not enough specificity in available search terms. And then you’re sunk.
So I gave up using google’s neurons and turned to the old fashioned kind: I emailed Dr. Scott M. Rochette, Assistant Professor of Meteorology at SUNY Brockport.
And Dr. Rochette came through for me. He knew of a resource — happened to be on the same National Weather Service site I linked above — which lets you request past monthly data. Thanks, Dr. Rochette.
Here’s the page. Why I didn’t find it through their site map, I don’t know, but I sure missed it.
And why do I need this, you ask?
No reason, really, except that I’ve started keeping a rain gauge (nothing special, just an old fashioned clear plastic gauge) (now watch, my dad will be blogging about his electronic gauge next) and I was curious how my readings matched up to the official ones.
For the month of April: official rainfall was 2.18 inches. My reading was 2.4. (Probably the airport is dryer because of all those plane wings flapping. ha ha ha kidding again)
Joking aside we could use more rain — the ground is awfully dry for spring.
And now, I’m going to tag this so the one other person in the Greater Rochester Area who someday looks for this information can find it, once this post is crawled a few times.
Just doing my part.
I’ve discovered that there is an absolute correlation between the amount of rainfall and the height of the grass in my lawn. More rain, more grass, less rain, less grass. Curious, that.
Yes!
Our lawns are off to a slow start this spring . . .
(This from someone who mowed yesterday…) I, too, have been a long-time observer of that curious correlation. It’s almost as if the grass were keeping a record of rainfall totals somehow. Maybe they had access to that resource you coldn’t find, Kirsten.
John
Here, it’s raining, raining, raining (Albany, NY) and I’m thinking the grass is going to be knee-high before I get a day dry enough to mow!