ANATOMY of a RAINGAUGE

Raingauges are traditionally made of copper. The base is sunk into the ground for stability & the container to the left is placed inside. This serves as an overflow collector when falls exceed around 80mms (an amount quite common over a month, but extremely rare within a 24Hr period. It tends to be used during holiday periods when rain accumulates over a period of 2 or 3 weeks.   The polythene collector is placed inside the overflow can & performs the usual day to day job of collecting all precipitation that falls into the funnel with the long pipe, which screws onto the base. The glass measuring cyllinder measures the amount of rain to the nearest millimetre. Any snow that accumulates in the funnel has to be melted with a known amount of warm water; this figure is then deducted from the total measured. On the far right, is an automatic raingauge, which has a bucket-tipping mechanism & a transmitting system which sends data to a display unit.This raingauge is of limited use during "freeze-ups"but can provide valuable data during "cloudbursts"