Imputation of missing sub-hourly precipitation data in a large sensor network: a machine learning approach

•Missing rain data at sub-hourly resolution is recovered using a two-step analysis.•Data are first modelled as rain/no rain, and subsequently regressed as true values.•Models are informed by related hydro-meteorological and precipitation data.•Machine learning analyses perform better than surface fitting for data recovery.•Machine learning techniques allow for real-time data recovery at high resolution.