A comparative analysis of rain-gauge and radar techniques for storm kinematics

This paper presents a comparative analysis between a rain-gauge and a radar storm tracking technique. The rain-gauge technique is based on simulating the storm motion by visualizing the sequence of the isohyetal patterns obtained using rain-gauge data and the radar technique is based on spatial correlation. The rain-gauge method is using 1-min rainfall data and via mpeg technology can display in 3D the storm motion in an animated form. The storm speed and direction are obtained using the rain-gauge method by tracking the advance of the maximum rainfall intensity in time and space. The radar technique determines the velocity vector by specifying the applied spatial shift that maximizes the correlation between every pair of consecutive radar rainfall grids. The comparison between the two techniques showed very good agreement. Based on the results, the rain-gauge technique can be used for studying the historical storm characteristics with sufficient accuracy and can be implemented as a tool for exploring the storm structure within the microscale which is not covered by the available operational radars.