Rain gauge design

[Mac Dude]

Hi all,

first post in the forums and only been using the software for just over a day, but it looks like it's working without any problems which is great!

I've had a couple of weather stations in the past and one thing has always bothered me about the design of the rain gauge - something that I think may be worse with my current WH3081.

While the station is different, here is a pic of my current gauge :

http://foshk.com/upload/pic/2008320170415.jpg

As you can see, the 'dish' is very shallow. We have had a few showers where the drops are large and simply splash off the dish not being registered. This would not happen in a traditional Cylinder gauge as the sides prevent drops from splashing out. I was thinking of extending the sides of the dish up, maybe 15cm or so, but leaving the overall area exactly the same.

I was wondering on your thoughts on this and whether or not it makes sense.

cheers.

[steve]

A number of Fine Offset owners have done exactly that. There should be some posts about it in the forum, but I'm not sure where they are.

[AllyCat]

Hi,

Yes, many FO owners have modified their rain gauge, often using a funnel which can also increase the resolution. A search of the forum, using a term such as "splash out" finds several examples such as this.

Cheers, Alan.

PS: You might also like to check some of the posts on spiders and FO rain gauges.

[Gina]

Yes, splashing out is the worst aspect of the rain gauge which extending the sides will cure. Another problem is that the pictures of the station show the rain gauge mounted high up on a mast. That makes it worse and it catches more wind. Also the wind can blow in and cause erroneous readings. False rain detection can also be caused by wind on the mast shaking the gauge. Best position is about 2 ft off the ground. Main unit with temp sensor is best about 5ft high and wind instruments as high as you can (need to extend the cable though). These are roughly the Met Office recommended heights.

[MickinMoulden]

Read this thread https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6916