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MEASURING RAINFALL Since most rainfall is less than an inch, a true rain gauge is designed to catch a relatively wide area of rainfall and to funnel the rain into a narrow area so that it will be deep and can be measured more easily. However, any open container with straight sides can be used to measure amounts of rainfall. When the rain has been collected, stick a ruler into the container to see how deep the water is. If the water is 1 inch deep, then 1 inch of rain has fallen. Measurements must be taken very soon after a rainfall, or some of the rain will evaporate and readings will be inaccurate. Attach a test tube beside a strip of paper on a block of wood. Pour water into a wide mouthed, straight sided jar until there is 1 inch of water in the jar. Pour this water into the test tube, and mark the height of the water on the strip of paper. Repeat this procedure using 3/4 inch, 1/2 inch, and 1/4 inch of water. Place the jar outdoors in the open. When rain is collected in the jar, pour it into the test tube to measure how much rain fell. Use a rain gauge in conjunction with a wind vane to measure wind direction and rainfall for a one month period. The information can be recorded on a table. A graph of the data will reveal how much rain falls in your area in a month and which winds bring rain. You can probably do that with snow, if you're lucky enough to live where there is snowfall. It might even be interesting to measure the depth of the water you use in the shower! Explain how a one-inch depth of water in a bathtub would be the same as a one-inch depth in a jar. I guess that one inch of water in a jar would amount to a far smaller quantity than one inch of water in a bathtub. Perhaps the report of rain in inches does not speak to quantity in terms of acre-feet or gallons. Obviously, more water would fall out of the sky if it rained in all of a county than if it rained in only one small area of a county. In order to know whether a certain number of inches of rain amounts to a "lot" of rain (or a "heavy" rain, or a rain that causes people to worry), one would have to know how many inches of rain would it take to cause a flood, or how many inches of rain would be sufficient to generate one acre-foot of water for irrigation purposes, or how many inches of rain would fill the catchment basins found in many municipalities.  Any problems with this page? Send URL to
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