The ONE thing plants cannot grow without is water. Therefore, when gardening or planting crops, it is important to understand sources of water in your area! Of course, rainwater is likely one of the best sources of water available to you, so it is important to have a way to measure rainfall, the amount of rain in a given area over a given time period.

History of Rain Gauges

Rain gauges have been around for centuries in various parts of the world. Not all of them look like the one you will be creating today! Some have a prism shape, some use buckets (like the tipping bucket method), and one design even attempted to calculate rainfall per hour using a clock mechanism! You can find explanations and illustrations of these various rain gauges from this publication.

The design of common rain gauges used today started appearing around mid-17^th century by scientists Robert Hooke (Gresham College) and Richard Townley (Townley Hall in Lancashire). It was not until the 18^th century that rules were written to standardize rain gauge instruments. Scientists such as Leupold, Pickering, Dobson, and Dalton realized using a smaller diameter cylinder, typically with a funnel on top to collect water, yielded more accurate results than larger containers.

Why are rain gauges important?

Measuring rainfall tells farmers and gardeners how much water they must add to their plants to help them thrive. If a storm produces a lot of rain, you may not need to water for a few days. Alternatively, if the storm produces a small amount of rain, you may need to supplement with hose or stored water.

Tracking rainfall over a long period of time can also tell us a lot about the weather patterns of our world. Meteorologists, or weather scientists, can calculate the amount of water stored in a raincloud by tracking rainfall over time. This can be useful when they predict how long a storm will last, and if there is risk of a flood—an overflow of water, especially over an area that is typically dry. Additionally, rain gauges are important to determine droughts. A drought is a time of dryer-than-normal conditions. Tracking rainfall with a rain gauge helps scientists establish that “normal” rainfall line and will alert if a place does not receive as much rainfall as it has during that time in the past.

Despite using more advanced technology like satellites and radars to predict weather events, meteorologist still rely on rain gauges because they supply exact measurements and ground confirmation of weather events. In fact, if you have ever had your phone’s weather app tell you it is raining when you are standing outside dry, you know how important ground confirmation can be. 

It is important to realize that rainfall does not only affect plants. Rainfall amount also affects city water, recreational activities, driving conditions, and much more. So even if you do not garden or farm, it is still important to monitor rainfall!