Precipitation

Part A (1 Mark)

1) The straight line in the chart obtained from recording rain gauges indicates
a) Continuous rainfall b) Constant rainfall
c) No rainfall d) None of the above
2) Isohyet lines have
a) Equal temperature b) Equal Rainfall Intensity
c) Equal Rainfall Duration d) Equal Rainfall Depth
3) Density of rain gauge network is ______ in plain areas than the mountain areas

a) More b) Less

c) Same d) None of the above

4) The area between the isohyets of 55 cm and65 cm is 100 km2 and between 65 cm and
75 cm is 150 km2. What will be the average depth of precipitation over the above basin?
a. 60 cm b. 66 cm c. 62 cm d. 65 cm
5) A 6 h rainfall of 6 cm at a place was found to have a return period of 40 years. The
probability that a 6 h rainfall of this or large magnitude will occur at least once in 20
successive years is
a. 0.397 b. 0.603 c. 0.975 d. 0.025
6) A watershed has a network of five rain-gauges. Annual rainfall recorded by these
gauges for a year is
Rain-gauge 1 2 3 4 5

Annual Rainfall (cm) 50 82 73 64 105

The additional number of rain-gauges for this watershed for a 10% error in estimation
of mean aerial rainfall is:

a. 8 b. 3 c. 7 d. 2
7) An example for non-recording type rain gauge is
a. Tipping bucket b. Natural siphon c. Simon’s d. Tele metering

8) Which of the following evaporation pans has the largest pan coefficient?
a. US Weather Bureau class A pan b. ISI Standard pan evaporimeter
c. Colorado sunken pan d. US-class A pan with sea water
 9) When specific information about the density of snowfall is not available, the water
equivalent of snowfall is taken as
a. 50% b. 30% c. 10% d. 90%

Part B (1 Mark)

1. What’s the difference between maximum probable precipitation and maximum possible
precipitation?
2. In which category the rainfall will fall if it occurs for a period of 10hrs and results in a
depth of 5cm rainfall?
3. Discuss orographic precipitation?
4. Distinguish between cold front and warm front precipitation?
5. Give the reason for Summer rains?
6. Differentiate between glaze and sleet
7. List out the important considerations to be followed while siting a Raingauge
8. The ideal raingauge network in mountainous regions of temperate, Mediterranean and
tropical zones is ---------
9. Define normal annual precipitation at a station
10. The area under hyetograph represents---------
11. What are the necessary checks for rainfall records before using it?
12. Explain the method to find the missing rainfall data
13. What are the common reasons for inconsistency of rainfall record?
14. Double mass curve is the plot of --------vs--------
15. Define a moving average plot and its use.
16. Uses of DAD curves
17. Define plotting position
18. Differentiate isohyet and isopluvial
19. The standard Symon’s type rainguage has a collecting area of diameter -----
20. Hyetograph is a plot of-----
21. What is meant by the 50 year-24 hour maximum rainfall is 160mm?
22. The solar radiation received at the top of the earth's atmosphere on a horizontal surface is
called as ____________________________________
23. What is snowfall and how it is measured?
24. Describe the rainfall pattern in your city
25. If the average rainfall, Standard Deviation, and K are 337.12 mm, 162.12 mm, and 15
respectively during year 2016 then PMP will be?

26. The diameter of Simon’s rain gauge catch funnel is __________

27. Imaginary lines of equal intensity of rainfall for a given return period is called as
________________
28. A method used to adjust the inconsistency of rainfall data is _______
29. Normal Annual rainfall is the average annual precipitation at any station based on _______
years of records

Part C (2 Marks)

1. The cumulative rainfall depth with time during a storm as obtained from a recording
raingauge at a station are given below
Time, hr: 10: 10: 11:0 11:3 12: 12: 13: 13: 14: 14: 15:0 15: 16:0
min 00 30 0 0 00 30 00 30 00 30 0 30 0
Rainfall, 0 6 11 16 24 29 38 51 57 61 66 67 67
mm

(i) Construct the hyetograph of this storm using uniform interval of 30 minutes and also
2 hours.
(ii) Compute the maximum average intensities of rainfall for durations of 30 minutes, 1
hour, 2 hour, 3 hour and 5 hours in this storm and plot the resulting intensity Vs
duration curve.
2. The shape of a catchment is in the form of a pentagon ABCDE. There are 4 raingauge
stations P, Q, R and S inside the catchment. The position co-ordinates in km are A(0,0),
B(50,75), C(100,70), D(150,0), E(75,-50), P(50,25), Q(100,25), R(100,-25) and S(50,-25).
If the rainfalls recorded at P, Q, R and S are 88, 102, 112 and 116 mm respectively,
determine the average depth of rainfall over the catchment using Thiessen polygon method.
3. Neighbouring raingauge stations A, B, C, D, E and F have normal annual rainfalls of 610,
554, 468, 606, 563 and 382 mm respectively. During a storm, stations B, C, D, E and F
have reported rainfalls of 22, 29, 35, 13 and 25 mm respectively and station A did not report
as it was inoperative. Estimate the missing storm rainfall at A by the (i) arithmetic average
method and (ii) the normal-ratio method.

4. Station A failed to report the rainfall during a storm. With respect to east-west and north-
south axes set up at station A, the co-ordinates of 4 surrounding gauges which are nearest
to A in the respective quadrants are P(7.5,7.5), Q(-10,15), R(-5,-6.5), S(12, -8) km
respectively. Determine the missing rainfall at A by using inverse distance method, if the
storm rainfalls at the four surrounding gauges are 98, 67, 72 and 53 mm respectively.

5. The annual rainfalls (in cm) at 7 raingauge stations in a basin are 58, 94, 60, 45, 20, 88 and
68 cm respectively. What is the percentage accuracy of the existing network in the
estimation of the average depth of rainfall over the basin? How many additional rain-gauges
are required if it is desired to limit the error to only 10%?
6. The watershed of a stream has five raingauge stations inside the basin. When thiessen
polygons were constructed, three more station lying outside were found to have weightage.
The details of the thiessen polygon surrounding the raingauge and recording of the
raingauges in the month of July 2012 are given below:
Raingauge Station A B C D E F G H
Thiessen polygon Area 720 1380 1440 1040 900 2220 419 1456
(Km2)
Recorded rainfall in mm 135 143 137 128 102 115 99 101
Station B, D and F are outside of the watershed. Determine the average depth of the
rainfall on the watershed in July 2012 by (a). Arithmetic mean method and (b). Thiessen
mean method

7. For a drainage basin of 600 km2, isohyetals drawn for a storm gave the following data:

Isohyetals interval (cm) 15-12 12-9 9-6 6-3 3-1

Inter-isohyetal area (km2) 92 128 120 175 85
Estimate the average depth of precipitation over the catchment.
8. A catchment has seven rain gauge stations. In a year, the annual rainfall recorded by the
gauges are as follows:
 Station P Q R S T U V
Rainfall 130.0 142.1 118.2 108.5 165.2 102.1 146.9
(cm)

For 8% error in the estimation of the mean rainfall, calculate the optimum number of
stations in the catchment. Determine the standard error in the estimation of mean
rainfall in the existing set of rain gauges. Conclude the answer with satisfactory
statement.

9. Annual rainfall at a point M is needed. At five points surrounding the point M the values
of recorded rainfall together with the coordinates of these stations with respect to set of
axes at point M are given below. Estimate the annual rainfall at point M by using the
Inverse distance method.
Station Rainfall Coordinates of
P (cm) station
(in units)
X Y
A 102 2.0 1.0
B 120 2.0 2.0
C 126 3.0 1.0
D 108 1.5 1.0
E 131 4.5 1.5

10. Fig (a) shows a catchment with seven raingauge stations inside it and three stations
outside. The rainfall recorded by each of these stations are indicated in the figure. Draw
the figure to an enlarged scale and calculate the mean precipitation by (a) Thiessen mean
method, (b) Isohyetal method and by (c) Arithmetic-mean methd.
 Fig. (a)

11. Rainfall data in an area shows that the 1-day maximum rainfall depth 230mm had a return
period of 30 years. Determine the probability of rainfall depth greater than or equal to
230mm a) occurring once in 10 years, b) thrice in 25 years, c) at least once in 15 years

12. Draw a neat sketch representing rainfall, pressure and wind speed distribution in a cyclone?

13. How will you convert the weakness of “spatial and temporal variation in water availability”
into the strength of water resource?

14. What are the parameters you need to estimate the amount of precipitate water in a column
of atmosphere?

15. What is the statistical reason behind a single maximum rainfall affecting the PMP
estimation?

16. Distinguish between a dam weir and barrage in terms of hydrology and hydraulics?

17. Why we need to use double ring infiltrometer to measure infiltration?

18. Assume that a vertical walled reservoir has an surface area of 5,00,000 m2 and that an
inflow of 1 m3/s occurs. How many hours will it take to raise the reservoir level by 30 cm.
19. The storage in a reach of a river is 10,000 m3 at a given time. Determine the storage 1 hr
later if the average inflow and outflow during the hour are 25 and 22 m3/s respectively

20. A storm with 20 cm precipitation produced a direct runoff of 11.6 cm. Given the time
distribution of the storm as below, estimate the Φ-index of the storm in cm/h.
Time of Start (h) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Incremental rainfall in each hour (cm) 0.8 1.8 3.6 4.6 1.0 3.4 3.8 1

21. During a storm, the hourly precipitation data observed was as follows:
Time (h) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Precipitation (mm) 1 25 20 45 30 10 0 15 10 0

Plot the Hyetograph; estimate the total rainfall in mm, and highest intensity of
rainfall.

Part D (5 Marks)

1. Test the consistency of the 22 years of data of the annual precipitation measured at
station A. Rainfall data for station A as well as the average annual rainfall measured at
a group of eight neighbouring stations located in a meteorologically homogeneous
region are as follows.
Year Annual Average Annual Year Annual Average Annual
Rainfall of Rainfall of Rainfall of Rainfall of
station A neighbour station station A neighbour station
(mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
1946 177 143 1957 158 164
1947 144 132 1958 145 155
1948 178 146 1959 132 143
1949 162 147 1960 95 115
 1950 194 161 1961 148 135
1951 168 155 1962 142 163
1952 196 152 1963 140 135
1953 144 117 1964 130 143
1954 160 128 1965 137 130
1955 196 193 1966 130 146
1956 141 156 1967 163 161
(a) In what year is a change in regime indicated?
(b) Adjust the recorded data at station A and determine the mean annual precipitation.

2. The data from an isohyetal map of a 24 hr storm is given below. Assuming that the
storm centre had an area of 25km2, obtain the Depth-Area-Curve of this storm. Using
the depth area curve, estimate the average depth of rainfall over an area of 2400 sq km.
Isohyet (mm) 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
Enclosed 543 1345 2030 2545 2955 3280 3535 3710 3880 3915
Area (km2)
It can be assumed that the storm centre is located at the centre of the area.

3. The mass curve of rainfall in a storm of total duration 90 minutes is given below. (a)
Draw the hyetograph of the storm at 10 minutes time step. (b) Plot the maximum depth-
duration curve for the storm. (c) Plot the maximum intensity-duration curve for this
storm.

Time (min) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Cum. Rainfall (mm) 0 2.1 6.3 14.5 21.7 27.9 33 35.1 36.2 37

4. The record of annual rainfall at a place is available for 25 years.

Year 195 195 195 195 195 195 195 195 196 196 196
0 1 1952 3 4 5 6 7 8 1959 0 1 2
Annual
Rainfall, 94. 92. 71. 77. 85. 122. 94. 86.
mm 113 5 76 87.5 7 3 3 1 8 69.4 81 5 3
Year 196 196 196 196 196 196 197 197 197 197
3 4 1965 6 7 8 9 0 1 1972 3 4
Annual
Rainfall, 68. 82. 74. 66. 106. 102.
mm 6 5 90.7 99.8 4 6 65 91 8 2 87 84
(a) Plot the curve of recurrence interval vs annual rainfall magnitude and by suitable
interpolation estimate the magnitude of rainfall at the station that would correspond to a
recurrence interval of (i) 50 years and (ii) I00 years.

5. Annual precipitation values at a place having 70 years of record can be calculated as

follows:
Range (cm) 60 – 80.0- 100.0-
<60.0 79.9 99.9 119.9 120.0-139.9 >140
Number of years 6 6 22 25 8 3
Calculate the probability of having
(a) An annual rainfall equal to or larger than 120 cm.
(b) Two successive years in which the annual rainfall is equal to or greater than 140 cm.
(c) At least once in ten successive years, where the annual rainfall is equal to or greater than
140 cm.
6. Test the consistency of the following precipitation data using double mass curve
method
a) Comment on the consistency of the data
b) In which year change occurs
c) Correct the data

Year Station Other

X stations
2001 178 146
2002 162 147
2003 194 161
2004 168 155
2005 196 152
2006 144 117
2007 160 128
2008 196 193
2009 141 156
2010 158 164
2011 145 155
2012 132 143
2013 95 115
2014 148 135
2015 142 163
2016 140 135
2017 130 143
2018 137 130
2019 130 146
2020 163 161