Climatology of Station Storm Rainfall in the Continental United States: Parameters of the Bartlett-Lewis and Poisson Rectangular Pulses Models

Abstract

The parameters of two stochastic models of point rainfall, the Bartlett-Lewis model and the Poisson rectangular pulses model, are estimated for each month of the year from the historical records of hourly precipitation at more than seventy first-order stations in the continental United States. The parameters are presented both in tabular form and as isopleths on maps. The Poisson rectangular pulses parameters are useful in implementing models of the land surface water balance (eg. Eagleson, 1978). The Bartlett-Lewis parameters are useful in disaggregating precipitation to a time period shorter than that of existing observations (Rodriguez-Iturbe et al., 1987).