Different methods of satellite rain retrievals have been applied to the data of the Chinese geostationary satellite FY-2C to calculate rain rates for the Xilin river catchment area from 2007 to 2009. In spite of the good coverage the accuracy of satellite derived rain depends on the type of rain and the selected method. Especially, the sparse spatial resolution cannot fulfil most of the user requirements. Measurements with ground based Micro Rain Radars provided a quantitative measure for the inhomogeneity of rain for different rain types and integration time. It can be concluded that for integration times longer than 24 hours the variability can be neglected within a scale of 10 km. In addition, valuable information could be received with respect to the droplet size distributions and reflectivity – rain rate relationships. This could be a base for potential weather radar rain retrievals.