Posting Rain Gauge Data
Volunteers are asked to track daily or monthly precipitation amounts. Daily observations should ideally be recorded as close to 7 a.m. as possible. Each daily observation will cover the previous 24 hours and represent the previous calendar day. This is consistent with the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program monitoring protocol.
Click on the “add data” tab in the top row of tabs. If you have not logged in yet, you will be asked to do so here. You can also log in at the top of the website at any time. You will see four tabs: daily entry, month grid, monthly entry, and historical.
Daily Entry
For daily observations, enter the rainfall amount to two decimal places, the date and time of the reading, and select one of the following quality levels:
- Good: It was a regular reading
- Trace: You saw some drops, but the reading was less than 0.01"
- Lost: Rainfall was collected in the gauge, but lost due to some mishap
- Snow: See special section for posting snow
- Absent: You were not at home to report a reading.
On days with no precipitation, select Good as the
quality of reading and enter "0" in the
Rainfall Amount field. This data is also useful!
Make sure you empty the rain gauge after each reading.
Month Grid
You can post daily entries a month at a time here.
Monthly Entry
Monthly observations should be made at 7am on the first calendar day of the month. This observation will represent the previous month. Collecting monthly total rainfall in a plastic rain gauge, like a Tru-Chek, requires the use of mineral oil to retard evaporation (see the gauges page for more information).
You can also enter additional comments if there is something additional that you would like to report, such as:
- Did a certain plant species bloom or grow significantly with rainfall events?
- Was there an especially significant rainfall event (very long in duration or very intense)?
- Did you notice changes in local water conditions over the month (dropping/rising lake or stockpond levels, running washes, flooding events, unusually dry conditions)?
The next step: How to post snow observations to Rainlog.org
