Rainfall rate modeling for various rainfall types in South Africa

This paper models the rainfall rate in Durban (29° 97'S, 30°95'E), South Africa for four different rainfall classifications: drizzle, widespread, shower and thunderstorm. Twelve-months data obtained in 2009 via the Joss_Waldvogel disdrometer, gave a total of 729 independent rain events and 5,542,147 raindrops. The measured rain rate probability functions were compared with the Moupfouma model using 1-minute integration time. The maximum likelihood estimators were adopted for the parameters of two other statistical models, the lognormal and gamma models. The results show that gamma model had the closest performance for the various rain classifications under consideration.