Methods of Finding out

Average Annual Rainfall of

Catchment
My Self

 Name : Suryawanshi Harshal Santram

 Roll No: 45
 Enrollment no: 2001300122
 Subject : Water Resources Engineering (22501)
 Topic : Methods of Finding out Average Annual Rainfall of Catchment
Information about Rainfall

 Rainfall is the amount of precipitation, in the form

of rain (water from clouds), that descends onto the
surface of Earth, whether it is on land or water. It
develops when air masses travel over warm water
bodies or over wet land surfaces. Atmospheric
turbulence and convection carries the moisture, or
water vapour, upward into air masses where they
form clouds. The clouds eventually release this
water vapour, which is dropped as rainfall.
Average Annaul Rainfall
 It is the average value obtained by adding up the annual
rainfall of a section of 35 years or more and dividing sum
by number of years
 It is denoted by (P) is called average annual rainfall
Methods of Finding out Average Annual Rainfall of a
Catchment

 There are various methods to find out average annual

rainfall are:

1. Arithmetic average Method

2. Representative area method/Thiessen’s polygon method
3. Isohyetal method
Arithmetic average Method

 This is a simple method .It includes averaging of

all amount that has been recorded at various
stations in the areas is added and then divided by
number of rain gauges.
 Arithmetic mean formula

Mean (x̄) = Sum of all observations / Number of

observations
 The simplest of all is the Arithmetic Mean Method, which
taken an average of all the rainfall depths as shown in Fig.
1.5.

 Average rainfall as the arithmetic mean of all the

records of the four rain gauges, as shown below:

 Average rainfall = (5 + 8 + 12 + 15)/4 = 10.0 mm.

 Thiessen’s polygon method
 In this method adjacent stations are joined by straight lines and thus
dividing entire area into series of triangles and then perpendicular
bisectors are erected on each of these lines and thus forms series of
polygons each polygon contain one rain gauge station.
 It is assumed that the entire area within any polygon is nearer to the
rain gauge station which is included in polygon than to any other
rainfall station.
 Then find the area of each polygon shown in Fig.
 If P is the mean rainfall on the basin the area of basin is A then,
 This method, first proposed by Thiessen in 1911, considers
the representative area for each rain gauge. These could
also be thought of as the areas of influence of each rain
gauge, as shown in Figure 1.6.

 For the given example, the “weighted” average rainfall

over the catchment is determined as:
 ISOHYETAL METHOD
 Isohyets are the contours of equal rainfall. In this method
rainfall values recorded at various rain gauge stations are
collected and from that isohyetal map is prepared and the
area between successive isohyetes is measured with the
help of planimeter.
 Let them be A1,A2,A3,A4 and the average rainfall for
these areas are P1, P2, P3,P4
 for the problem shown in Fig. 1.7, the following may be assumed to be the
areas enclosed between two consecutive isohyets and are calculated as under:
 Area I = 40 km2
 Area II = 80 km2
 Area III = 70 km2
 Area IV = 50 km2 
 Total catchment area = 240 km2
 The areas II and III fall between two isohyets each.
 Hence, these areas may be thought of as corresponding to the following rainfall
depths:
 Area II: Corresponds to (10 + 15)/2 = 12.5 mm rainfall depth
 Area III: Corresponds to (5 + 10)/2 = 7.5 mm rainfall depth
 For Area I, we would expect rainfall to be more than 15 mm but since there is no
record, a rainfall depth of 15mm is accepted. Similarly, for Area IV, a rainfall
depth of 5 mm has to be taken.
 Hence, the average precipitation by the isohyetal method is calculated to
be:
THANKS