At-Site Based Evaluation of Rainfall Estimates for Indiana
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13, Issue 3
Abstract
An at-site based rainfall frequency analysis was performed using hourly precipitation data for 53 selected stations in Indiana. The combined use of generalized extreme value and extreme value type I distributions was found to provide the best statistics, and was applied to construct the at-site estimates. This at-site result was then compared to other commonly used regional rainfall estimates, including Indiana Department of Natural Resources rainfall, Huff and Angel rainfall, and National Weather Service Atlas 14. Non-negligible differences between at-site and regional estimates were found even though Indiana was previously reported as a homogeneous region for rainfall. Results suggest that discretion is necessary when using regional rainfall estimates for site-specific problems. The at-site estimate was also applied to compute the depth ratios between different durations. This ratio exhibited significant variability with increasing return period implying that the use of a constant depth ratio to estimate rainfall might not be appropriate for larger return periods.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13 • Issue 3 • March 2008
Pages: 184 - 188
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Apr 11, 2006
Accepted: Apr 5, 2007
Published online: Mar 1, 2008
Published in print: Mar 2008
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