Supplemental
Rainfall Reports
by
Jason Hansford
During
the late springtime months, the National Weather
Service Office in Shreveport distributed a “Partners
Working Together” survey to various users
in our forecast area, including local media
outlets, emergency managers, and agricultural
interests. Several comments/requests were made,
particularly from the agricultural community,
for a product to be created to gauge the significance
the lingering drought has had on area farmers,
by presenting cumulative rainfall totals over
a long duration for certain stations located
in the Four State Region. Thus, in early September,
the National Weather Service Office in Shreveport
began issuing the “Supplemental Rainfall
Totals” report, which provided observed
rainfall totals, their normal values, their
departure from normal, and also percentage of
normal, for various locations during the last
3, 6, 12, and 18 months.
This
product will be issued around the first of every
month, and will provide updated monthly rainfall
data for the cities of Shreveport and Monroe,
LA, Texarkana, El Dorado, and De Queen AR, as
well as Tyler, Longview, and Lufkin, TX. This
is strictly an internal product, and will only
be available from the National Weather Service
Shreveport homepage, http://www.srh.noaa.gov/shv
on the World Wide Web. Here, there will be an
icon entitled "Supplemental Rainfall Data",
located above the clickable map that provides
point forecast data. By clicking on this icon,
the user will have ready rainfall information
for certain locations over various periods of
time. Please note that the rainfall totals here
are unofficial, and are for reference use only.
Formalized requests for rainfall data to be
used for legal purposes must be submitted to
the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville,
NC, at (828) 271-4800, Monday through Friday,
8am-6pm Eastern Time.
Please
check this new product out on our webpage, and
if you have any questions/comments, email Jason.Hansford@noaa.gov
or Mark.Frazier@noaa.gov
.
www.weather.gov
