It is popular belief that the weather is “bad” more frequently on
weekends than on other days of the week and this is often perceived to be
associated with an increased chance of rain. In fact, the meteorological literature
does report some evidence for such human-induced weekly cycles
although these findings are not undisputed. To contribute to this discussion,
a modern data-driven approach using structured additive regression models
is applied to a newly available high-quality data set for Austria. The analysis
investigates how an ordered response of rain intensities is influenced
by a (potential) weekend effect while adjusting for spatio-temporal structure
using spatially varying effects of overall level and seasonality patterns. The
underlying data are taken from the HOMSTART project which provides daily
precipitation quantities over a period of more than 60 years and a dense net
of more than 50 meteorological stations all across Austria.