Rainfall estimates, inferred from the thermal infrared channel of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite--East (GOES-East) for August 1979, are compared with gauge rainfalls over hourly and daily time frames for area-averaged amounts and point values. The area of interest is a 3.6¿106 km2 region in the central third of the United States. Over the month the satellite rainfalls tend to be smaller by 20-40% than the corresponding gauge amounts, but mean sampling errors inherent in a gauge network of this density (1 gauge/4000 km2) are estimated to be minimally 100% of the areal mean rainfall. Root-mean-square errors are approximately 1 mm for daily and 0.1 mm for hourly area-averaged rainfalls and are 14 mm for daily and 5 mm for hourly point rainfalls. Satellite-gauge differences of daily (hourly) point values can be large, but 50% of the satellite amounts are within ¿4 (¿2) mm of the gauge amount, and 90% are within ¿20 (¿ 8) mm, reinforcing the fact that the satellite-derived rainfall is an area-averaged rather than a point estimate of rain amount. Timing of rain events is comparable for daily area-averaged satellite and gauge data. However, hourly area-averaged gauge data exhibit considerably more short-term fluctuations than the hourly satellite data. For the two satellite algorithms tested, the streamlined technique requires the least computation time (10% of that needed by the life history technique) and shows a little difference in its comparisons with the gauges. ¿American Geophysical Union 1987