Exploration & description/Starts of rains with dry spells

Since a long dry spell occurring after rains have started could also result in crop failure, we decided to investigate ´Start of Rains´ in conjunction with ensuing dry spells. Years were distinguished by those that had a dry spell exceeding a period of 10 days within the first 30 days following the ´Start of Rains´ with those that did not. Rainfalls < 0.85mm were included within the definition of a dry day. This seemingly arbitrary value was chosen to avoid any complications that may subsequently occur when the analysis was extended to cover all meteorological stations because of possible station-to-station inconsistencies in the recording of very small rainfalls. 

Source: Jean Hanson