Thanks Marco! You are a great explainer. And yes, the January 2008 storm may have been big but not that big, so its either a garden hose or someone peeing into my rain gage as a practical joke. Either way, I wouldn't have seen it without this plot. And you have given me two new functions to look up "TimeSeries" and "MovingMap" so I may have questions on what these functions do.

Another question, if I had another rain gage in the same excel file as another column, how do I get Mathematica to recognize there are two different time series y variables with the same date/time stamp? I tried with another data set using DataListPlot and it didnt work, it didnt recognize another column as a new time series with the same date/time stamp so I got an error. When I deleted the second column it worked

thanks, Roger

Dear Roger,

ok. Thank you. I will look into that this night. Reading and plotting the data is quite straight forward:

data = Import["/Users/thiel/Desktop/Novato_ALERT_tips_1993_2012.xlsx"];

where the directory/folder would have to be adjusted. A DatelistPlot works with the data quite directly:

DateListPlot[data[[1, 3 ;;, {1, 3}]], PlotRange -> All]

Cheers,

Marco

Hi Roger,

that shouldn't be too difficult. There is even built in functionality to make time series more regular. But importing and cleaning the data depends a little on the exact format it is in. Could you post a sample file, i.e. attach the Excel file to your post?

Cheers,

Marco