RAIN leads to the Inaugural ANNI Award

water washing across
my horse paddock
My fellow blogger, Anni is a "clever clogs".

She posted a blog entry today which told me that Robertson had received over 130 mm of rain overnight. I had previously gone to the regular site I use "NSW 24 hr Rain Bulletin - South Coast". Unfortunately, that site, which used be very reliable, no longer seems to report Robertson - there is a blank entry there.*** That is appalling, in view of the importance of Robertson as the headwaters of 3 separate catchments, which all supply water to Sydney (Wingecarribee (Wollondilly)/Nepean/Kangaroo River (Shoalhaven).

Anyway, now to the good news. I rang Anni and asked her how she obtained that detailed rainfall data. And here it is how she found it - step by step:

1. Go the BoM home page, and click on "Hydrology".
   
2. From there, click on "Floodwarning services". That page will present a map of OZ.
   
3. On the right hand side, select "Display on map" - "24 hours rainfalls".
   
4. Then click on the map, to zoom in on your chosen location. That will bring up your State map, firstly.
   
5. Click on the location you want to investigate, and it will bring up your regional map. In the case of Robertson, it gives you the "Central Coast map" from the Shoalhaven to Tuggerah (north of Sydney) (The URL refers to it as Greater Sydney). Here is the trick, at that level of detail, the data on the map is "clickable".
6. Find a coloured dot near the place you are interested in (Robertson, in my case). Hold the curser over the dot and it tells you where you are (Robertson)
   
7. Then click on that dot, and up comes a dialogue box with "155 mm in 24 hours". That is the current reading, as at 5:30 pm on Sunday.

How amazing that the data is there, seeing as it is not published on the rainfall observations site. *** But how ridiculously hard it is to find the data/

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*** Following an email from me, the BoM "Help Desk" revised the entry for Robertson, and promised to check with the record keeper (the owner of the Robertson Pie Shop) to find out what had gone wrong. It now shows 155 mm till 9:00am, and a further 66 mm since then. Thanks, BoM.
(Thanks to them for the record update, Thanks to Huey for the rain.

"Send it down, Huey" means "bring on the rain" - Aussie colloquialism.

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The BoM wins my award for the website which has the most interesting information, in the least accessible form.

Some of you might like to take this idea up, so, let's call it the

"ANNI AWARD"

in honour of the "clever clogs" who found her way through that maze, to find the treasure of information contained therein.

My inaugural "ANNI AWARD" goes to the Bureau of Meteorology Website.

Other nominations for the "ANNI AWARDS" would be welcomed.