My rain gage got it’s first test the other day. We got a nice 1 7/10" of rain in there. The water line is just barely visible under the bottom holder bracket.
And yes BillyBob in Kansas, your rain gage is metric because it measures in tenths of an inch. So take that! You commie pinkos in California!
As a side note: We got a light frost last night. It got down to 31F/-1C at some point last night. Not a hard enough frost to kill the bell pepper plants outright, but it did singe and tip the leaves a bit this morning.
Billy-Bob replies: the use of tenths makes it decimal but not necessarily metric
I’m so used to seeing the weatherperson talk about getting 7 tenths of an inch (that’s a good day’s rain hereabouts) I never noticed it’s not halves and quarters like with teaspoons.
Nah, the redneck joke is BillyBob doesn’t know the difference. And he doesn’t know BillyBob should have a hyphen either.
Weather peoples talk in tenths of an inch for rain and often use fractions of an inch for snow fall around here. Go figure. Conversationally, people will turn .2" of an inch of rain into 1/4" inch of rain. I know I’m guilty of doing it. Instead of saying I had an 1.7" of rain in the rain gauge, I will tell my neighbor we had an 1 3/4" of rain. Does it make sense? No, it doesn’t. And no one cares either.
I admit I turn the tenths into quarters in my head as well.
But with snow (our mountains get it) I’ve mostly heard the meteorologist talk about it in feet, or fractions of feet. I have a notion that a foot of snow and an inch of water are about the same amount of water, but no idea if that’s correct.
How much water there is in an inch of snow varies, and often by a noticeable amount. A foot of snow that falls when it’s say 20F/-6C has less water in it than a wet, heavy snow fall at 36F/2C. And the snow that falls at -30F/-34C has a whole lot less than either.
But 1 cubic foot of “average snow”, for those in the general US area, is roughly 1" of water. Close enough for us Cletus’.
I think it’s interesting that at large scales, when talking about land use, agriculture, flood risk, etc., the standard unit of measure for water volume in the U.S. is acre-foot.
Well it seems to make sense for flooding! And irrigation as well. I guess metric folks use hectares, but I wonder if it causes problems when they have walled fields that were originally sized by oxen doing a day’s plowing at a time.
They sell tape measures with 1/10 feet units. Inches and feet are cursed enough as it is, and now they combine it with decimal.
Yes they do. Though they are not common. But some people need do that.
Do you need to dump it out after a rain? I’d never remember to dump mine out, and it would end up showing apocalypse level rains
Yes I do dump it out. I wanted to buy a wireless digital one to go with my digital temp and humidity gage, but I didn’t think it would survive the winter unless I spent a lot more money than I wanted to,
A string might do the trick!
Long straw
Canadian here, the bucket-tip-gauges survive the -20c winter just fine.
All the ones I’ve seen of tipping bucket are very expensive. Costing several hundred dollars to buy. I was unwilling to spend that much. $7US was a lot more comfortable amount to spend.
Trip to the local library to 3D print one?
I do own 2 printers. Maybe as a winter project.
Or grow mosquitoes 🦟
I have 2
one gets dumped sometimes
the other one less
TIL ‘gage’ is an accepted way of spelling ‘gauge’. Not really sure why but I hate it.
Not really sure why but I hate it.
Your entire education – if it was anything like mine – was dominated by teachers following a curriculum that said that what is prescribed is more important than what is understood, as if at some point we reached an epiphany on the best way to spell things.
Reading Chaucer or Shakespeare is a joy not just because they were highly capable and clever writers, but also because they wrote how they felt. Language is about intelligibility and emotion, not about adherence to arbitrary rules.
That’s not to say that there’s no value in having maxims for spelling, punctuation, or grammar, just that we let ourselves police these things super zealously for very little benefit.
fr fr
I agree with everything you said. But I try and limit my zealous policing to myself, to absolutely no benefit indeed. And I can point my finger at the teachers, specially one, to blame for my orthographical traumas. I hated them and their bullshit, and maybe because of that I love linguistic variety, I usually like alternative spellings and words that can be written or pronounced in different ways. But not this one, for some reason.
Maybe, as a non-native English speaker, I learned that word more from reading than speaking (it’s likely I mispronounced it mentally as gorge/gawdg the first time, or few times, I read it even), and it’s a word I read and use more often than the average person. It did take a bit more effort for my brain to understand the sentence because of the spelling, so I guess it didn’t like that.
If you get involved in the technical trades, it gets weird.
A gauge is something with a dial and a needle pointer and a scale printed on it. Something you would be familiar with is a fuel gauge on a car. That’s a gauge. It gives you a reading of how much fuel is in your tank. They are mostly round. But linear ones exist, like a tire pressure gauge.
A gage is a physical thing used to measure or compare other things to. For example, I have set of Pin gages. Which are round, very accurately sized pieces of short rods. They are used for checking hole diameters quickly and easily. A gage you might have used could be a spark plug gage to set the gap of the plug for your car or motor bike. As a toolmaker, I’ve made a LOT of gages over the years. But I’ve never made a gauge.
Is it esoteric? Why yes, yes it is. But the different words exist because there are those of us that need to differentiate between the two. Should it matter to you? Probably not. So carry on and as you were.
I am in the technical trades. And the things you call ‘gages’ I, as most people, call ‘gauges’ too because, unless you’re throwing them to challenge someone to a fight like one would do with a glove, they’re different spellings of the same word, with ‘gage’ being way less common.
Yes, gauge/gage doesn’t matter much anymore. But when I went to buy those gage pins and gage blocks, that’s how they are named. When people asked me to make go/no go gages, they didn’t sent me an email the asking for a go/no gauge. So yes, the words can matter and they STILL get used.
Perhaps for YOU the distinction doesn’t matter, but there are times and places it still does. And that’s fine.
Look, if you want to spell it ‘kerb’ when it’s on the left side of the street and ‘curb’ when on the right, you do you mate, I’m not gonna tell you your usage of the English language is wrong. But for most of the world, except a small fraction of Americans, it’s ‘gauge pins’, ‘feeler gauges’, ‘rain gauges’… even in the most specific, technical environments. ‘Gage’ is so rare that I think I haven’t encountered it ever, and if I have I must have thought it was a misspelling, until I read your second post using it and I looked it up in the dictionary from which I learned it’s an uncommon spelling of the same word.
I stated that in most cases it does not matter what word you use. But, for some it does matter in specific cases. Gage is a part of my lexicon and I was taught how and when to use the words “gage” and “gauge” by people smarter than both of us put together.
If it’s not a part of your lexicon, I fine with that. I’m not the one that appears, (and forgive me if I’m wrong), to take issue here.
We need to make it not accepted.
OP, you gotta learn to use the not horrifying spelling of the word.
My stated goal in life is to make it so that you wake up screaming in terror because you saw my face in a dream.
So it appears my work here is done!
Was there some concern that it wouldn’t? I think as long as you don’t mount it inside, it’s pretty fool-proof tech.
You cannot know for sure if something works or not without the true test of use in field conditions.
You never know until you try…
whoa you got almost 2 rain in there
CEO of Rain just announced that Rain 2 is delayed because those damn hackers won’t stop leaking it.
I’m surprised they would want the Risk of Rain 2.
Yes, almost! It was a fine rainfall. Not too hard, not too misty. Just a nice all day rain.
That base ten fraction of an inch is just cursed.
Just for the sake of mutual intelligibility, it’s a little over 1 and 9/12ths of a centimeter of rain.
You monster!
Even twelve is too metric like those fancy french I want 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 or 1/64th like a red blooded american.
No it’s not. As a machinist, decimal inches matter - a lot. The problem for most people is they they can’t seem to understand when you are using decimal inches, fractions don’t matter and they don’t exist in this world.
If you want a base ten measurement system just use metric.
Nah, this is fine. Rain gauges aren’t rocket surgery.
Eighths are better because you half the distance and continue until you get to eighth.
Decimal inches are an abomination.
When you are using fractions, decimal inches don’t matter. And if you are using decimal inches, why are you concerned about fractional measurements?
Because decimal inches don’t have a place in this work.
Fractional inches or metric. Period.
Talk to the meteorologists. They chose the scale for rain gauges. And yes decimal inches have place. you just refuse to admit it.
Yep, that’s rain, it works. Congrats!
I read that as “rage gain” and was like “are you maining a barbarian?”
Not currently. But…
1 7/10"
🤨
7/12", Imperial system is wack.
At least as an engineer I get to use metric lol
Edit: wait holy shit that meter is cursed then. Heresy!
Exactly! You are now on the path of True Enlightenmenttm !
You really want to be impressed? We measure snow fall in either whole inches or 1/2" if you want to be fussy about it.
Look at you, rubbing your rain in our faces.
The rain has been a little short here too.
1,7 desi inch? The sequel to “Hedwig and the angry inch”?
I like it!
I’d like to introduce you to COCORAHS.
CoCoRaHS (pronounced KO-ko-rozz) is a grassroots volunteer network of backyard weather observers of all ages and backgrounds working together to measure and map precipitation (rain, hail, and snow) in their local communities. By using low-cost measurement tools, emphasizing training and education, and utilizing an interactive Website and Mobile App, we aim to provide the highest-quality data for natural resource, education, and research applications. The only requirements to join are an enthusiasm for watching and reporting weather conditions and a desire to learn more about how weather can affect our lives.
