All about rain gauges
29 Apr
© Meredith Ludwig
The rain gauge that usually hangs on the outer rail of the deck had been taken down for the winter so it wouldn’t fill with water and freeze. Now with temperatures rising, the bright orange plastic vial was hanging, waiting to catch the spring rain. It didn’t take long for those drops to fall, and it took even less time for the gauge to find an occupant. It was as if winter had not kept him away, as if there were no better place for a tree frog to be than right here on this porch hanging out in this narrow puddle of water.
This happens every year. The first summer I started visiting this porch we nicknamed the frog “Boomer,” short for “Boomerang.” We named him that because he went away, but he always came back.
Boomer had special markings on his head, and he was quite a big tree frog. So big it was hard to imagine how he got himself into the rain gauge. He must have backed into it, because there was no way he could have turned himself around if he’d gone in head first. I loved looking into the gauge and seeing him stuffed in there, looking back at me. Boomer was such a source of joy he became a member of the family. We regularly checked on his whereabouts and imagined his froggy escapades when he was absent. I longed for a little video camera that could ride with him on his two- and three-day jaunts.
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24 Apr
Rain has always been an important factor for those communities that rely on rainwater and water in general for their livelihood, such as gardeners and farmers. In ancient times, the amount of rain was important to know how moist the soils were and from this they could estimate how good their crops would be. Too little or too much rain, crops would fail — no crops, no food! Earliest measurements were no more than bowls left out for a period of time to see how much they filled.
Rainfall measurements were found in ancient Chinese government records as early as the Chou dynasty, more than 3,000 years ago. Records have also been found in Greece and India at about 400 to 500 B.C. The best records in pre-modern times however, were kept in Korea. King Sejong wanted to improve agricultural technology and his son, who was to become King Munjong, invented a rain gauge in the 1400s. A rain gauge was sent to each village and used to assess the village’s potential harvest from the rainfall, which in turn determined how much the village should be taxed.