A look at driving rain intensities at five cities

In this article, maximum hourly driving rain intensities calculated from hourly wind and rainfall data for five cities, three in Great Britain and two in Norway, are examined and comparisons are made with average annual driving rain values, also from hourly wind and rainfall data. The results show that the maximum observed driving rain intensities versus wall angle are quite different from angular distributions of annual driving rain both at and between the stations. For driving rain intensity expressed as the average number of exceedances of a threshold intensity value versus wall angle, on the other hand, results are qualitatively and quantitatively very similar to angular distributions of annual driving rain. This suggests that average annual driving rain might be useful as a surrogate measure of driving rain intensity in situations where relative risk of repeated rain penetration of doors, windows and other openings in building facades is of interest but long series of hourly wind and rain data are not available.