Discussion: Instincts right

Indeed, it was the heaviest rain since September (September 17 to be precise) - 8mm at Kent Town, which seems to have been fairly typical of the plains. A bit more to the south with 28 at Kuitpo.

Melrose Park isn't saying what it got (wonder where the gauge is - probably council works depot) but I had forgotten about Nov 3rd when we definitely received more rain that night than Kent Town recorded. Pity there doesn't seem to be a publicly available archive of results from all the rain gauges - is this because it would be too massive to maintain?

If it's a Bureau-owned site, you can get its historic data from http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/. This also picks up sites which don't report in real time (either those that send in daily reports, or those which report by mail at the end of each month).

Melrose Park is now showing up with something, but only 0.8, which suggests to me it has a problem.

Some of the real-time reporting gauges are owned by other agencies so don't go into the Bureau historical database - you can tell these on the 'dot' maps if you click on the station because they have a six-digit station number that starts with 5. In your area, Hawthorn is one of those.

Ok - it's just the rainfall dot maps which only last a day, then?

I feel silly now for getting excited about the Thurs night rain when it wasn't nearly as substantial as Friday afternoon's brief but intense storm. That yielded 29mm at Hawthorn and 35 at Scotch College (and someone killed by a lightning strike at Mt Barker!) but again less than 8mm at Kent Town. Think they need to shift the official Adelaide gauge :)

I was excited by Thursday night rain too. A bonus of Friday's rain was being properly awake to sit and enjoy the novelty of it.

The simple pleasures of life!