British Rainfall 1897, p.17

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	Mean Annual Rainfall in the English Lake District British Rainfall 1897 page17 ON THE MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL IN THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT In British Rainfall, 1895, we gave all the total yearly amounts of rain recorded at Seathwaite from 1845 to 1895, and the average, and showed the relative wetness and dryness of each year. In British Rainfall, 1896, we gave all the yearly total amounts of rain recorded within an area of about 6 1/2 miles from S. to N. and 4 1/2 from E. to W. (say 30 square miles), having Seathwaite nearly in the centre. We wish now to deal with an enormously larger area - about 650 square miles - and it becomes undesirable to print all the observations (it would take twenty or thirty pages), although of course we have had to tabulate them all (about 1600 yearly values) as the only mode of getting the true mean, and so ascertaining the general distribution of the rainfall. We must here call attention to a difficulty, and state the course which we have taken. We dislike reprinting, and therefore ask our readers to refer to page 18 of British Rainfall, 1896, before proceeding further. We there showed how the rainfall of a few years, even very wet or very dry ones, could be made to indicate the fall in an average year. Therein lies the difficulty of the present paper. It is not likely that the wetness or dryness of each year was equal over the whole of the large area with which we now have to deal. For this reason it would be better to have several standard stations and, to compute the deduced mean for each station from the nearest standard station; but this would complicate the work, and it is not at all certain that the difference between the standards might not lead to greater errors than does the use for the whole area of the Seathwaite ratios, which we have adopted.
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