A rain gauge is an instrument used by weathermen, meteorologists, and even hydrologists to measure exactly and with precision the exact amount of rainfall or snowfall in a particular location.
Rain Gauges are usually graduated cylinders or tipping buckets. The standard rain gauge is a graduated cylinder attached to a funnel top. The rainfall falls through the top of the funnel and flows into the graduated cylinder where rainfall is more easily measured. This type of rain gauge is very simple and very accurate, but this type of rain gauge is not without flaws. It must be emptied and during heavy rain it could easily overflow and result in corrupt data.
Tipping buckets are more complicated but work on a simple premise. When about a millimeter of rain collects in a bucket, it self dumps the bucket in a seesaw fashion and records the amount of rainfall. Each time the buckets self dumps, it sends a click to the rain gauge so that the rain gauge records the amount.
Rainfall is interesting to measure and see records of. The highest rainfall ever recorded in 24 hours was 71.85 inches of rain at La Reunion from January 7th to 8th, 1966. The most rainfall in a single year was more than 1000 inches back in 1861 in Cherrapunji, India. Cherrapunji also receives the most rainfall in a typical year.
No matter what style of rain gauge you use, you will easily know how much rainfall you’ve gotten at your house. Manual rain gauge are very easy to use, but you may not want to go out in the rain to measure the rainfall. It’s exciting to sit in the comfort of your home and see on your home weather station how the rainfall is accumulating during a heavy storm.
