It's the season for rain and lightning

I want to purchase a rain gage so I can help check the accuracy of the Sky. I want to know the gage you professionals use. I will use it to check accumulation and check readings during rainfall.

I’m looking for a quality and accurate gage.

luck you if we dont get some rain we are in serious trouble here in istanbul already the ground is showing cracks of about an inch wide in places… first year in ten years ive not seen any substantial rainfall for periods . you can taste the dust and dry dirt in the air here… anyway we were warned third most likeliest city to experience to drought conditions in the next 10years …

any way do you mean you have no existing hardware to compare ?

davis hardware is a good start avoid the low cost ambient clones out there .

offers flexibility in positioning components…

Look for a Cocorahs gauge. About 35 bucks. Matches my VP2 exactly in about 6 months of use.

https://www.weatheryourway.com/cocorahs/rgcoco.htm shows what they look like. I forget where I bought mine.

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There is luck here. It seldom rains at this altitude. But we do get a little. When it does rain I want to be able to check it against the Sky.

Thank you, I’ll look for one.

I use the standard 4” CoCoRaHS gauge which is the one that NWS recommends in their Skywarn spotter training. It does a good job of capturing rain and the design limits evaporative loss on hot days. It also can be used in snow conditions without the funnel top and center tube. You just need to melt the contents of the 4” collector and pour it into the center tube for the liquid-equivalent reading. Of course, the Sky unit is not intended to measure snow, but NWS/CoCoRaHS really appreciates it if you report snow water-equivalent, too.

Next up from there would be the NWS standard 8” collector. A bit pricey at around $330 USD, but it is the NWS official standard gauge.

As far as an electronic gauge goes, I use an older Texas Electronics 6” tipping-bucket gauge. Mine happens to have internal heaters so it can operate year-round, but it takes some playing around to prevent the heater from causing under-reporting of snow liquid-equivalent. It is, however, a great instrument in above-freezing confitions.

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I order this to start with.

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I wish I had a Sky… we get 100mm rain in few hours these days. It varies a lot from place to place but this year the thunderstorms are really strong here.

Shipments are being prepared and sent. It will be soon.

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That’s the one that matches the CoCoRaHS standard. :+1:

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That’s the one that I,m using for my cal. Standard, works well.

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Good choice! That’s what I have.

One piece of advice is to take the internal tube out if it is going to be anywhere near freezing on a particular day. That one part supposedly does not stand up well to ice from the reviews that I’ve read.

I also recently added a Davis VP2 to my collection:

You can check out the comparisons between the two in the calibration data thread…

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I found the business card - I ‘did’ get mine from weatheryourway.com - they had great service and I couldn’t find a lower price. Once thing I like is the overflow feature where the high-resolution inner gauge that you can read to 0.01" accuracy overflows into the big external tube at exactly 1.00" of rain. The outer tube holds a ridiculous amount of rain, they claim 11" capacity.

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The price us good at $32 but add $10 for shipping.

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How did we live before Amazon Prime brought us free 2-day delivery??? :thinking:

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the season has certainly begun

This happens in several cites. It’s common in Saigon.

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I am ready, a few manual rain gauges and a peet bros pro, drop counting rain gauge.

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For those that like lightning.

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It may actually rain tonight or tomorrow so I can use the new rain gage to compare with the Sky readings. It will be good to confirm the accuracy.

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