Light Moderate and Heavy Precipitation Definitions?

Supercell

Its currently raining outside at a rate of about 6mm/hr.

Last night I saw it going up to 93.7mm/hr and there is totally no comparison.

Before last night I would have said this was almost moderate rain but to be honest now would consider it to be definitely in the low light variety (for starters there is no spray as it hits the surface it falls on ..).

Does anyone know what the various classifications the Met Eireann uses are for precipitation intensities?

SuperSean11

Sware i just saw lightning not raining dough

Snowbie

I dont know the classification Met.ie uses,hope this gives you an idea but mine are:
Light rain,drizzle < 6mm/hr
Moderate rain 7mm/hr - 20mm/hr
Heavy rain 21mm/hr - 30mm/hr
Downpour 31mm/hr - 90mm/hr
Torrential downpour >91mm/hr

This is what i go on and classify myself since the beginning of my AWS days.
It is quite easy to distinguish heavy rain from downpour etc from
obvious intensity
sound
spray
flash flooding.

As we know,heavy rain can be continuous giving 25mm over a peroid of hours while the downpour 25mm in an hour.Torrential downpour giving much more in the same time peroid from severe TS.

Mothman

Official definitions. Got this from another forum, so don't have link to.
Must say it rather surprised me, when I first read it.

Official definitions:

for non-showery precip:

(a) Rain

Slight less than 0.5 mm hr-1

Moderate 0.5 to 4.0 mm hr-1

Heavy more than 4.0 mm hr-1



(b) Snow

Slight less than 0.5 cm hr-1

Moderate 0.5 to 4.0c cm hr-1

Heavy more than 4.0 cm hr-1



(c) For showers (convective)

Slight less than 2.0 mm hr-1

Moderate 2.0 to 10.0 mm hr-1

Heavy 10.0 to 50.0 mm hr-1

Violent more than 50 mm hr-1

Supercell

Thanks Snowbie and Mothman.

Snowbie your scales make good sense to me, if the official figures are as Mothman says then thats interesting to know when reading rain reports on the met.ie site for sure.

One thing I've learned since moving here, is that the scales are different! For example here has had 20.3mm rain with what I would consider mostly light intermittant rain.
I was looking outside at work today and a colleague was going on about it lashing outside, I though well its only about 6mm/hr , but just nodded and said nothing!!

I can usually tell the outside temperature by my nose to a degree pretty well, since getting the Vantage am learning a whole new skill , tis all good stuff.