Synthesis of hourly rainfall data

A study was made of the possibility of representing the hourly rainfall process observed at a point by a simple model using a digital computer. The purpose of the modeling procedure is to produce synthetic hourly rainfall data for the Stanford watershed model to make possible long records of synthetic streamflows. The model represents the hourly rainfall process by a sixth-order Markov chain and is shown to be a suitable procedure. Dry periods between storms are found to be longer than dry periods that occur in nature. When used in the Stanford watershed model, the synthetic data produce hydrologic characteristics for a test watershed that are in good agreement with those derived from historic data.