Statistical Properties Of Rain Cells In The Padana Valley

A large collection of radar reflectivity maps gathered in the period 1988-1992 at Spino d’Adda experimental station, located in the centre, in the Padana valley, has been exploited to investigate the statistical properties of rain structures and their descriptors. The results of this analysis can be of interest for meteorological, hydrological and telecommunication applications. We found that the isosuperficial diameter follows an exponential distribution; when the threshold on rain intensity is increased disappearance is dominant over fragmentation; moreover, the number of “mothers cells” that generates N “daughters cells” decreases exponentially with N. In order to give a complete but concise characterization of the geometrical, physical and morphological properties of rain cells, a set of analytical descriptors has been introduced and statistically defined through their probability density functions and the centrality, dispersion and excursion parameters. As a final point comparative statistical analyses have been performed at different thresholds for every couple of the descriptors introduced, which allowed to highlight correlations between them.