**Author details**

The statistical boxplots scheme can provide valuable information to operational forecaster to predict the potential rainfall due to a TC. However, it must be known that there are still many uncertainties for the boxplots because of the small sample size for some TC categories due to the natural features, as well as the short observation history. With more TCs landfalling along the Southeast China coast in future, the larger will be the database of TCs and the more accurate

This study applied all the historical TCs landfalling along the Southeast China coast from 1953 to 2011 to explore a statistical boxplot scheme to forecast the maximum daily (R24) and 3-day accumulative rainfall (R72) at a certain rain gauge (SMS) during TC-landfalling period. Three TC's characteristics, including TC's landfalling direction, landfalling distance to SMS, and landfalling intensity, are considered to categorize all the historical TCs landfalling within the distance of 700 km to SMS. The corresponding historical daily rainfall records at SMS during the TC-landfalling period (rainfall within a couple of days before and after TC landfalling) are collected and organized according to the TC's category. The organized rainfall records for each TC category are analyzed by percentile estimation. The results are plotted in boxplots. It is concluded from the boxplots that the rainfall at a certain area is generally positively correlated to the intensity of the landfalling TC within 200-km distance to the landfalling center. Within the distance of 400 km to the landfalling location, the rainfall at SMS is generally negatively associated with the distance between TC's landfalling center and SMS. With the same intensity scale, TCs landfalling on the west of SMS will generally bring heavier rainfall at SMS than TCs landfalling on the east of SMS within the distance of 400 km. Eleven tropical cyclones landfalling within the distance of 700 km to SMS in 2012 and 2013 are used to evaluate the performance of the statistical boxplots to predict short-term rainfall at SMS. Results show that the boxplot scheme is very valuable to forecasters to provide rainfall range due to each TC category. For most of the time, the observed rainfall due to a landfalling TC is within the range of the

The boxplot scheme is easy to implement. The rainfall boxplots are quite helpful to operational forecasters. As of this writing, the technique is already in use as a valuable reference at SZMB

This paper is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province with Grant 2015A030313742, Special Fund for Science and Technology Development in Guangdong Province with Grant No. 2016A050503035, and The Innovation of Science and Technology Commission of Shenzhen Municipality with Grants JCYJ20120617115926138 and

will be for the short-term TC rainfall prediction by the boxplots scheme.

228 Recent Developments in Tropical Cyclone Dynamics, Prediction, and Detection

**5. Conclusions**

historical rainfall records.

**Acknowledgements**

ZDSYS20140715153957030.

to predict the short-term rainfall at SMS due to TCs.

Qinglan Li1\*, Hongping Lan2 , Johnny C.L. Chan3 , Chunyan Cao2 , Cheng Li2 and Xingbao Wang1,4

\*Address all correspondence to: ql.li@siat.ac.cn

1 Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

2 Shenzhen Meteorological Bureau, Shenzhen, China

3 School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

4 The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
