For more information, see our article on extreme weather including hail. However, due to the nature of hail data, the use is somewhat different than that of the standard weather measures described above. The Visual Crossing Weather API also offers hail data. At other times when it is very cold, snow can remain on the ground for weeks or months after the last flake fell. For example, sometimes snow falls on warm ground and doesn’t accumulate at all in spite of plenty falling from the sky. Remember that these metrics can interact in ways that are not always obvious. The snow depth measure tells how much snow is currently on the ground in areas that have not be plowed or piled. The first measure, snow, tells how much fresh snow fell from the sky during the reporting period. Snow and snow depth are related in that they both deal with snow.

There are many valuable ways to use precipitation coverage, and you can read more about them in our article devoted to this specific weather measure. For example, if it rained for 6 hours during a day-long reporting period, the precipitation coverage value for that daily weather record would be 25% (6 hours out of 24 total). It is always expressed as a percentage of the total time in the reporting period. Precipitation coverage is a useful value that tells the length of time during the reporting period that precipitation occurred. In the case of non-liquid precipitation, the value is reported as if it were converted into water. This value includes not only the amount of rain but also the amount of snow and any other non-liquid precipitation. Precipitation is the total amount of precipitation of any type that fell during the period. These include Precipitation itself, Precipitation Coverage, Snow, Snow Depth, and Hail. There are several important precipitation measures. What precipitation measures are available? Whether you are looking for precipitation data to plan a trip, schedule a conference, or optimize agriculture, a weather data service such as Visual Crossing Weather can provide precipitation data easily using global historical reports going back to 1970. Historical precipitation data is an important weather measure that is very useful for many types of personal analyses and business use cases.

Precipitation totals by year