  Naveau et al. (2016) have recently developed a class of methods, based on
extreme-value theory (EVT), for capturing low, moderate, and heavy rainfall
simultaneously, without the need to choose a threshold typical to EVT methods.
We analyse the performance of Naveau et al.'s methods, along with mixtures of
gamma distributions, by fitting them to marginal non-zero rainfall from 16,968
sites spanning the Australian continent and which represent a wide variety of
rainfall patterns. Performance is assessed by the distribution across sites of
the log ratios of each method's estimated quantiles and the empirical
quantiles. We do so for quantiles corresponding to low, moderate, and heavy
rainfall. Under this metric, mixtures of three and four gamma distributions
outperform Naveau et al's methods for small and moderate rainfall, and provide
equivalent fits for heavy rainfall.
