Developing a Relationship between Radar and Rain Gauge Datasets in Central and South Florida

The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) is an agency that relies on a network of nearly 300 rain gauges in order to provide rainfall data for use in operations, modeling, water supply planning, and environmental projects. However, the prevalence of convective and tropical rainfall events in South Florida during the wet season presents a challenge in that the current rain gauge network may not fully capture rain events which demonstrate high spatial variability. NEXRAD (Next Generation Radar) technology offers the advantage of providing a spatial account of rainfall, although the relative quality of radar rainfall measurements remains largely unknown. The intent of this paper is to examine the relationship between gauge-adjusted NEXRAD data and corresponding rain gauge measurements in order to assess the relative performance of radar and rain gauge technologies for different conditions.