The mystery of Dubbo's missing rainfall data has been solved.
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Investigations by the Bureau of Meteorology may alter the city's rainfall tally for April 2020, determined by an automatic weather station (AWS) at Dubbo City Regional Airport.
Residents raised the alarm late last week when the BoM declared 106.6 millimetres (mm) of rain had fallen in April, a 25-year record.
Keen rain watchers and record keepers argued the tally was short, perhaps as much as 28mm.
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They reported of "good general rain" around Easter in Dubbo and surrounding communities including Wellington which received 21.4mm in the 24 hours to 9am April 10, Good Friday, and 5.8mm in the 24 hours to 9am April 11.
A South Dubbo resident told of getting about 28mm while another resident on the city's outskirts welcomed about 20mm.
But the BoM's website data did not reflect Dubbo's experience with "0" in its rain column from April 7 to April 26.
In recent days it has removed the "0" from April 8 to April 11 after the matter of missing rain data was raised by the Daily Liberal.
This week a BoM spokesman revealed the airport's AWS "did not record any rainfall due to a fault with the site's rain gauge" between April 9 and April 15.
"Once the bureau became aware of the issue, a technician was sent to the site to resolve the issue and the rain gauge has been operating normally since April 16," he said.
The bureau takes the integrity of data records very seriously..
- Bureau of Meteorology spokesman
The spokesman said the BoM understood how important rainfall observations were to regional communities, particularly those in drought.
"We operate more than 700 automatic weather stations across the country and on average these are fully operational nearly 99 per cent of the time," he said.
"However, like all pieces of equipment, automatic weather stations can on rare occasions encounter technical faults or issues.
"The bureau takes the integrity of data records very seriously and has thorough quality control procedures in place that ensure any missing or potentially suspect data is investigated as soon as possible, and removed from the bureau's public website, if necessary, and accounted for in the climate record.
The April rainfall observations from the Dubbo airport AWS are currently going through this standard quality control process."
Average rainfall in Dubbo in April is 31.4mm.
The year 2000 previously held the 25-year record for the highest rainfall in April with 105.8mm recorded.