Rainfall disperity

alorfi · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:53 am Post subject: Rainfall disperity

After Friday evening's downpours, my station up in North Port has recorded 13.47 inches since Jan. 1. I'm up over 10 inches as far south as my station in Punta Gorda Isles. Yet, here in the Cape, I'm looking at only 4.46 inches over the same timespan and I see you've had even less to my SW. I see from cululative NEXRAD that ample rains have fallen over Collier County, so I guess our winter rainfall right here is a bit of an anomaly. I hope this changes.

bob · Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:40 pm Post subject: Re: Rainfall disperity

The discrepancies continue. Within a 30 mile radius there is a 300% diffierence in rainfall totals. This is a continuous of last years pattern. I still believe a heat island effect is developing in the Cape Coral Metropolitan area. Yes, we can refer to our area as " metropolitan".
As such, we should observe heavier precipitation to our Northwest as is currently taking place. I base this on heat island effects in other metro areas such as Detroit. In the Detroit area, heavy precips occur on a regular basis in the NW suburbs. We have been experiencing the same patterns localley for the past 18 months. There has been a distinct weather pattern change in our area over the past 10 years or so. You could set your watch by the the afternoon thunderstorms years ago. Around 4-5pm storms would build to the east and move toward the coast. We have not seen this pattern for several years. Almost all the weather has been diverted to our NW and to some extent to our SE towards Collier Co. Even with a La Nina pattern in place, I believe it is not enough to overcome the island effect on Cape Coral.

Bob
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alorfi · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:14 am Post subject: Re: Rainfall disperity

Sorry, Bob, but the localized rainfall patterns up in the Bay area rip apart your theory. The coastal land areas (such as St. Pete) are directly downwind from the supposedly warmer concrete-warmed Tampa area and they have received the highest rainfalls in that three-county area. There is just noting to support that a heat island is taking place in our relatively minor city of Cape Coral. The new contruction, replete with their pools and sod installations replacing largely scrub brush, are simply not creating a "heat island".

I'm in the middle of the Cape, right off Pine Island Blvd. I've been here three years now and have tallied annual rainfall amounts of 91.17, 50.55 and 37.93 inches. That averages 59.9 inches per year which is actually a bit above the climatalogical norms. No, we certainly cannot make any "heat island" conclusions over a year or two of data. Heck, the global warmin alarmists are having to back off bigtime on all their nonsense as the 2007 global totals rolled in. Just hang in there for a few years and the upcoming above-normal rainfall totals in the Cape will competely erase this unusual period of drought. It's nothing more than an anomoly. I suffered terribly the last two winters up in North Port as the bulk of my landscape business is located there. We had less that a single inch of rainfall from February through May this year. Now I've seen over a foot since Jan 1st and that followed a very wet December. It WILL rain down here in the Cape... the averages decree it shall happen!