Summary of Precipitation Data for the Black Hills Area of South Dakota, Water Years 1931-98

Abstract

Long-term precipitation records are summarized for the Black Hills area of South Dakota. Precipitation data are available for numerous gaging locations; however, few gages have continuous, long-term records, and periods of missing record are common. Thus, a geographic information system (GIS) utilizing an inverse-distance weighting method was developed to generate spatial precipitation distributions from point precipitation data for the Black Hills area, based on available monthly records. The spatial distributions were used to estimate periods of missing record for all 94 gages considered. The resulting monthly records of measured and estimated precipitation are tabulated for water years 1931-98. Average values for water years 1961-90, which is the period used for calculation of climatic normals, were used to develop an isohyetal map of normal annual precipitation for the Black Hills area.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA441756

Entities

People

  • Daniel G. Driscoll
  • Ghaith R. Hamade
  • Scott J. Kenner

Organizations

  • South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Altitude
  • Computational Science
  • Digital Data
  • Geographic Information Systems
  • Geological Surveys
  • Grids
  • Groundwater
  • National Parks
  • Natural Resources
  • Precipitation
  • Sea Level
  • South Dakota
  • Spatial Distribution
  • Statistics
  • United States
  • Water
  • Water Resources

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Atmospheric Science/Meteorology
  • Coastal and Marine Engineering/Sediment Transport/Hydraulic Engineering