In this study we use precipitation estimates that are derived from the Weather Surveillance Radar – 1988 Doppler ground-based radar sites through the conterminous U.S. (commonly referred to as the Next Generation Weather Radar – NEXRAD). The NEXRAD precipitation processing subsystem of the National Weather Service consists of several steps, or stages to generate various levels of gridded precipitation estimates. We use one of these stages of data – the stage IV gridded daily CONUS-wide data that is generated and disseminated from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (referred to as NCEP stage IV)
Data from the NCEP stage IV data have been routinely produced since 2003 and there exists a relatively continuous archive of daily and hourly gridded precipitation over CONUS since then. We provide an overview of methodologies for computing radar-based Climate Normals and include a comparison of our results with traditional in-situ based normals. These include gridded normals for monthly average precipitation, daily average precipitation and standard deviations. Finally, we describe the probability of occurrence of these variables and include a description of their distributions.