3 ms·
Rain is also strongly seasonal, so i'm not sure thinking about it as a random variable, via its standard deviation, is helpful.
by twic 5y ago
Rain is also strongly seasonal, so i'm not sure thinking about it as a random variable, via its standard deviation, is helpful.
- dredmorbius 5y agoYou should be considering both. There's the seasonality, which is to say, the expected duration of dry spells. There's the variability, which is to say how much the total quantity varies year-to-year. There might be additional concerns such as bimodal or heavily-skewed averages --- a mix of very dry and very wet years, with few near the "average" arithmetic mean, for example, would change the calculus for how large collection and storage areas need be. (I suspect that much of California might be subject to such patterns given the El Nino / La Nina ENSO cycle.)