Monthly Precipitation Probabilities for Climatic Divisions in Michigan

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Issue Date
2014-05-29
Authors
Strommen, N. D.
Subject
Precipitation ; Michigan ; NOAA- Weather Service ; Michigan Department of Agriculture ; Michigan Weather Service ; April 1967
Abstract
Today, the value of climatology is being brought more and more to the attention of the prospective user as he makes plans for the future. This applies equally well to: large industries planning future expansions or moves; farmers considering a change in their principal crops? government agencies dealing with health problems, or the natural resources agencies anticipating frequencies of hazardous fire conditions or possibly planning a conservation program to cut erosion and restore a given area to useful production. People working in research are also finding climatology a very useful tool to evaluate the total impact of weather on a particular project or crop. This paper has been designed to aid these groups in making intelligent estimations concerning future precipitation amounts expected over a given area. These areas have been carefully selected to provide as much homogeneity in weather elements as possible for Michigan. There will be some variation within each of the ten climatic divisions of Michigan. However, when considering these areas as a whole, the results should be realistic. The user should keep in mind, when using the data in tables 3-12, that a single station may have a precipitation distribution slightly different from that of the climatic division. The size of the climatic division will have some effect on the distribution pattern. This may be due to the total number of stations used in obtaining the division average, or the greater variations which can be expected in the almost homogeneous features of a larger area. To illustrate this point let's look at the results listed below. Column one lists the various probabilities from 10 to 90 percent. Column two shows values of X for the Northwest Lower Climatic Division of Michigan. Column three lists values of X for Traverse City, a station centrally located within the Northwest Lower Climatic Division. In each case, X is the precipitation amount which corresponds to the probability level given in column one. We note that the values are very close at the 50% level with an ever increasing departure observed as you move toward the 10 and 90 percent probability levels.
Description
Partial OCR done. 43 pages total.