Have Your Own Homemade Rain Gauge

If you are creative enough and don't like to spend extra dollar on a new replacement rain gauge to the recently broken one, why not start collecting your tools and equipment and make your own homemade rain gauge? It can be so much fun especially if you do it together with your kids or family. It can also be a great science project for students to learn more about weather - specifically rain and its water cycle. Doing your own homemade rain gauge only requires minimal tools. Here are some guides on how you can start with this project.

Basic Overview of the Rain Gauge

The use of rain gauge, while may not interesting to many, can actually be useful especially because it allows us to learn and compare the rain fall trend from this season to another. It also allows us to know the weather even on those times when we were asleep. It affords us little excitement when there is a fore coming thunderstorm or heavy rain. And gives us compensation to minimal extent on those times when we know the disadvantages of wet days.

The general recommended practice of using the rain gauge is to examine it daily in a regular hour, say at every 8 in the morning and measure the collected rain water. Reports are made with the use of a dial or chart, where all the daily measurements of the collected water are entered.

The Standard Rain Gauge

Any standard rain gauge can be made with the use of cylindrical tube, with a diameter of 5 to 8 inches at the inner part of the rim and the bottom closed down by the use of a funnel. At the lower part of the cylinder, there is a glass catcher which stores the water delivered by the funnel until it is measured using the graduated glass. Good fit is ensured with the lower part so to minimize evaporation as much as possible.

What you need to make a homemade standard rain gauge

A homemade version of this device can be easily constructed with little expense. A cylindrical tin, brass tubing with a height of at least 3 inches and up, and a stout glass tubing with no more 1 quarter diameter with the receiver are the supplies you need for this gauge.

The Gauge

The cylindrical tin is used for your receiver. In this case, be sure to solder watertight the side joints and its bottom. If in case you use your tube for the gauge, solder the flat metal to one squared end. Next, place the receptacle on a level base, and then pour water in until reaching a mark 4 inches off the end of a wire positioned perpendicularly.

Corking the other end of the tube and pouring the water - be careful not spilling any water - this gives the number of your tube inches filled with the other 4 inches in your receiver. As you divide this result by 4, you have now your depth measure unit representing the inch of the rainfall.

The scale

To graduate your scale, use a smoothed white wood strip with an inch wide. Each inch, divide it into tenths, these tenths into hundredths, and so on until you have a scale that serves as the reading for the rain fall. Attaching permanently both scale and tube to a board will save you trouble and time as well as protect its tube from damage.

The receiver

This is your tin funnel, which serves as your receiver with a central hole made in its bottom and big enough to let the funnel pass through up the swell. The funnel's rim is soldered to the receiver's inside using little heat.