PLEASE NOTE: The file format described below refers to the Met Office Land Surface data (1900-2000) dataset which has been superseded by the Met Office MIDAS dataset (1853-present) at the BADC.
A list of UK stations for which the BADC holds .drain files is available (.drain stations).
The surface data file name convention is (STATION_NAME)(YEAR).(MESSAGE_TYPE).(FILE_EXTENSION)
These .drain files contain rainfall amounts measured during
one or more 24 hour period. The file headers END_HOUR
and DAY_CNT define the observation period.
For daily rainfall, i.e. rainfall over a 24 hour period, usually
09-09, DAY_CNT=1. The 24 hour period ends on the stated date and
time. For daily rainfall from irregular sources, i.e. those which
report monthly or weekly, DAY_CNT is then the number of days over
which the rainfall is measured. Again the period ends on the stated
day.
-999 indicates a missing value.
The first line of the data file are the fields headers (which
are detailed in the table below).
The fields in the .drain data files are :
| HEADER | PARAMETER | FIELDS | COLUMNS | UNITS | COMMENTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID | Raingauge Number | 1 | 1-8 | - | Rainfall observation site identification |
| IDTYPE | - | 2 | 9-17 | - | Rainfall observation site identification |
| MET_DOM | Meteorological Domain | 3 | 18-28 | - | Message types |
| YEAR | Year | 4 | 29-35 | - | 4 characters |
| MONTH | Month | 5 | 36-43 | - | 1 or 2 characters (from 1 to 12) |
| DAY | Day | 6 | 44-51 | - | 1 or 2 characters (from 1 to 31max) |
| END_HOUR | Hour | 7 | 52-61 | - | Hour of observation from 0 to 2300 |
| DAY_CNT | Observation period | 8 | 62-70 | hours | See COUNT definition |
| AMT | Precipitation Amount | 9 | 71-78 | 0.1 mm | See Met Office documentation |