If you needed another prod to sign up as a CoCoRaHS weather observer, now you can get PRISM data for your own neighborhood.

I’ve got 13 years of precip data for my house, first as part of the Albuquerque National Weather Service’s CityNet program, and now as a CoCoRaHS observer. But 13 years is too short a time period to calculate a meaningful average. Now, thanks to the new PRISM data, I have a clearer idea of what the long term looks like in my neighborhood:

Average monthly precipitation, Altura Park neighborhood, Albuquerque

That’s a PRISM estimate of average monthly precip during the 1981-2010 period now in use for US “climate normals”. You can see that October is usually one of our wetter months, averaging 1.18 inch (3 cm). This year I had 0 inches (0 cm).

Here’s the PRISM data compared to my shorter record:

PRISM 1981-2000 averages compared to Fleck 1999-2012

For the first ten months of the year:

• 2012: 4.81 inches (12.2 cm)
• my period of record average: 8.43 inches (21.4 cm)
• prism average: 8.67 inches (22 cm)

Cumulative precip