BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Question concerning boating and lightning...

Richard Casady

On Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:13:39 -0400, wrote:

These are the kind of storms Florida is famous for where
one guy can get an inch of rain in 15 minutes and the guy on the block
over doesn't get a drop.

I used to have a farm half a mile from Des Moines International
Airport. I had five rain gauges, and I can tell you thunderstorm rain
is generally that patchy. Two inches fifty yards from half an inch.
You have a shaft of rain that might even be somewhat uniform, not
really likely, but it can taper off quickly at the edges. If it is
moving slow enough you can get three inches 200 yards from zip.
What Florida is justly famous for is having lots of them. I am an
instrument rated pilot, and even in Iowa we know about Florida
weather. We can get there in an hour. Pilots are connoisseurs
of weather: they have to be, much more than even mariners and farmers.

Casady