Precipitation !

'

storms for use in computing the design flood in the hydrological design of major
structures such as dams.

Table 2.3 Maximum (Observed) Rain Depths (cm) over Plains of North India4, 5

Area in km2 ´ 104

Duration .026 0.13 0.26 1.3 2.6 5.2 7.8 10.5 13.0
1 day 81.0* 76.5* 71.1 47.2* 37.1 * 26.4 20.3† 18.0† 16.0†
2 days 102.9* 97.5* 93.2* 73.4* 58.7* 42.4* 35.6† 31.5† 27.9†
3 days 121.9† 110.7† 103.l† 79.2† 67.1† 54.6† 48.3† 42.7† 38.9†
Note: *—Storm of 17–18 September 1880 over north-west U.P.
†—Storm of 28–30 July 1927 over north Gujarat.

Maximum rain depths observed over the plains of north India are indicated in Ta-
ble 2.3. These were due to two storms, which are perhaps the few severe most re-
corded rainstorms over the world.

2.11 FREQUENCY OF POINT RAINFALL

In many hydraulic-engineering applications such as those concerned with floods, the
probability of occurrence of a particular extreme rainfall, e.g. a 24-h maximum rainfall,
will be of importance. Such information is obtained by the frequency analysis of the
point-rainfall data. The rainfall at a place is a random hydrologic process and a sequence
of rainfall data at a place when arranged in chronological order constitute a time series.
One of the commonly used data series is the annual series composed of annual values
such as annual rainfall. If the extreme values of a specified event occurring in each
year is listed, it also constitutes an annual series. Thus for example, one may list the
maximum 24-h rainfall occurring in a year at a station to prepare an annual series of
24-h maximum rainfall values. The probability of occurrence of an event in this series
is studied by frequency analysis of this annual data series. A brief description of the
terminology and a simple method of predicting the frequency of an event is described
in this section and for details the reader is referred to standard works on probability
and statistical methods. The analysis of annual series, even though described with
rainfall as a reference is equally applicable to any other random hydrological process,
e.g. stream flow.
First, it is necessary to correctly understand the terminology used in frequency
analysis. The probability of occurrence of an event of a random variable (e.g. rainfall)
whose magnitude is equal to or in excess of a specified magnitude X is denoted by P.
The recurrence interval (also known as return period) is defined as
T = 1/P (2.11)
This represents the average interval between the occurrence of a rainfall of magnitude
equal to or greater than X. Thus if it is stated that the return period of rainfall of 20 cm
in 24 h is 10 years at a certain station A, it implies that on an average rainfall magnitudes
equal to or greater than 20 cm in 24 h occur once in 10 years, i.e. in a long period of
say 100 years, 10 such events can be expected. However, it does not mean that every
10 years one such event is likely, i.e. periodicity is not implied. The probability of a
rainfall of 20 cm in 24 h occurring in anyone year at station A is 1/ T = 1/10 = 0.l.