this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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English "Everything" user here. Sorry.
Liters/meter^2
Is this a common unit for weather? I translated the post text and the climate/drought makes sense.
I just haven't ever seen the USA national weather service use the volume over area units like that. Mostly like a depth measurement.. X inches short of typical rainfall insert timeframe here..
I guess dimensionally it's the same, it just hits differently IMO?
Maybe the us national weather service just assumes a volume and doesn't say it? They kinda have to. If you say it rained x inches of rain in that hour, how do you know in what area? X inches over the whole country? Or per city? Per square inch? They have to measure the rainfall over a certain volume over a certain time. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to compare it.
You don't need the area to actually have a clue about the significance of a rain event. In the weather news you'll find expressions like "20 mm of rain". 20mm "water table" is the independent from the area as it means the same like 20mm/m² or 20mm/km².
You won't actually calculate the total amount of water (volume) coming down by multiplying it with the area of the rain event.
Inches or mm are a perfectly fine measurement for the amount of rain. Volume over area mathematically comes out as a unit of length.
It's a lot more intuitive with snow. If you get five inches of snow over night, there's no need for an area reference, because everything gets the same five inches of snow, no matter how big the area.
With rain it's the same, everything gets the same "height" of rain, even though it usually doesn't stay in place like the snow.