Showers and storms brought heavy rain to a few areas of Northeast Kansas last night.

Here are some rain totals for the area:

• Lawrence Municipal Airport: 0.35″
• Topeka, Philip Billard Municipal Airport: 1.00″
• Topeka, Forbes Field: 0.61″
• Manhattan Regional Airport: 0.91″
• Emporia: 0.66″

You may notice most of the rainfall totals are from airports across the area. This is because most of the weather observations we receive come from various Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) sites (not all ASOS sites are located at airports, but a significant number area). While there are several sites across the country, the lack of a site in every town limits the observations we receive. For example, last night one inch of rain was received according to the ASOS at the Philip Billard Municipal Airport in Topeka, while only 0.35″ was received at the Lawrence Municipal Airport. There are 27.5 miles between the two airports, so what about the rainfall received at homes in-between?

This is one of several limits to ASOS. Other than the observations we received through different ASOS sites across the area, we cannot get exact rainfall totals, or other weather observations for every town in the area. This is where you can help. Anytime we receive rainfall, or there is any other significant weather event going on, your weather observations are a substantial help. If you notice fog, light rain, snow, freezing rain, etc. feel free to send us an email, or post them in the comments on any of our blog entries. There are severals ways for us to receive estimates on rain or snow totals, but your observations are better!

I’ll have more about ASOS and some of the limitations in upcoming blogs.