Enjoying His Job

How this big of a tube is deemed to be only
one inch of precipitation is beyond me!
When we first signed Ryan up to report the rainfall I wondered if he'd soon tire of it and have to be prodded and threatened to go do his daily reading. I have been pleased to see that that isn't the case. Though I do remind him most days, he eagerly runs out at 8:00am to read the gauge, then reports the numbers to me so I can submit them online. He's learned how to read hundredeths of an inch, and this week he got a lesson on a different kind of precipitation...snow.

After correctly reading the gauge for a few weeks, he's been
released to read it on his own without me hovering over him.
Normally he just reads the numbers on the tube to see how much rainfall we've had, but when we woke up to snow yesterday, he had to bring the gauge inside so we could melt it and then do the reading. It was a bit of a cumbersome task, but fun nonetheless.


Replacing the gauge after melting the snow.
Of course, he couldn't wait to get back outside to play in the snow. Unfortunately, he ended up having to wait a few hours, but at least the sun was shining when the went out to play.

First Reading

Promptly at 8:00 am this morning Ryan and I went out to read the rain gauge so we could submit the data to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS). It didn't rain at all, but we had freezing fog this morning (yep, weird but true!) and the fog was all frozen on the outside of the gauge. We submitted our data online and an hour later I looked out the window and it was snowing! So much for a dry day today. So tomorrow instead of 0.00 rainfall he will get to report a T (trace).


He is pretty excited by his new job, and we're all having some fun with it. If you want to see our station on the map and see our precipitation for any given day, click here. Currently there are four stations in our county, and we're the northernmost station.

Gauging the Weather

I've mentioned before that Ryan is fascinated by all things weather-related, so when I saw an ad on our local news website looking for people to measure and report on rainfall in their area, I submitted an application in Ryan's name (with me as a helper, of course). We were assigned our station number, we ordered and received our rain gauge, I mounted the gauge to a post, and today I got the post put up in the back yard! Tomorrow at 8:00 am Ryan will go out, read the gauge, and commence his "career" in weather reporting for CoCoRaHS! Unfortunately, it's not supposed to rain for the next three days. Hey, I had to wait for a dry spell! Who wants to go dig a hole in the rain?