Water resources of the Penobscot River basin, Maine . urposes. The amount of precipitation at any given point varies greatlyfrom year to year, and the records for even considerable periods mayshow marked variations from those for other periods, so that recordsfor short periods can not without proper corrections be safely ac-cepted as indicating even approximately the average which would bedetermined from observations covering a long period. But howevermuch the precipitation in a district may vary during certainperiods from the average of a long period, there is a more or lessconstant ratio bet
Water resources of the Penobscot River basin, Maine . urposes. The amount of precipitation at any given point varies greatlyfrom year to year, and the records for even considerable periods mayshow marked variations from those for other periods, so that recordsfor short periods can not without proper corrections be safely ac-cepted as indicating even approximately the average which would bedetermined from observations covering a long period. But howevermuch the precipitation in a district may vary during certainperiods from the average of a long period, there is a more or lessconstant ratio between the fall at different points in the region, someplaces receiving on the average more or less than other places, owingto the influence of local topography, the exposure of the gage, andother conditions. If this fact is borne in mind it is possible so tocorrect short-period records of stations that they will approximatewhat they would have shown had observations been made contin-uously throughout the entire period of observations in the PEECIPITATION. 17 This method of correction, known as the ^Fournie method, isused for reducing meteorological observations to what is generallycalled the fundamental period. The fundamental period coveredin this discussion is the 42-year period 1869 to 1910, inclusive, duringwhich nearly continuous records of precipitation have been kept atthe State college at Orono, and an effort has been made to reduce allthe short-record observations to what they would have shown hadobservations been continuous at each station throughout the entireperiod. The record at each station in the tables following was thereforecompared with the record for the same months and years at theOrono station, and such corrections applied as the ratio betweenthe rainfall at the two stations indicated as necessary. In order, however, that investigators of the quantity of rainfallin that region may make their own deductions, the actual monthlyaverages for each stat
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade, booksubjectwatersupply, bookyear1912
