Rain-gauge, go away, come again some other day
Why is it that only old people have rain gauges? Have you ever seen someone in their twenties outside wondering how much rain fell in the last storm?
You haven\’t, because people only start caring how many inches of rain fell after they reach a certain age. It\’s different for everyone, like puberty. Some people start early, in their 40s, others in their 60s. But it comes with an advanced level of maturity and never seems to go away.
The previous owners of the house I live in were, I think, in their 70s. They had a big, three-foot-tall rain gauge in the back yard mounted on a post. I\’d been busy with other things – fixing up the house – so I never bothered with it much until this spring. That\’s when I noticed that it was the stupidest thing ever.
OK, sorry, not the stupidest, I\’m not trying to offend. But really, what\’s the point of these things?
Mine was filled about two inches high with black sludge, remnants of every rainfall in the last few years. Above that were a couple of inches of dirty water, indicating that at some point, an indeterminate amount of water fell in the immediate area of the rain gauge.
How much water fell in the front of the yard? Who knows! It might have been the same as in the back, it might have been different, but you can\’t really be sure, because the rain gauge is HORRIBLY INNACURATE.
And, even if it weren\’t, it\’s COMPLETELY POINTLESS.
Fine, so two and three quarter inches of rain fell last night. WHO CARES? What difference does it make? It already fell, it\’s not like you can take it back. And if you think maybe that was too much rain, well, too bad, because if it\’s going to rain again tonight there isn\’t a thing you can do about it.
Perhaps you\’re basing the amount of watering you do on how much rain there was? I can\’t see how that makes much sense. Either it rained a lot or it rained a little. If it rained a lot, don\’t water. Rained a little, water.
I don\’t think it has any practical purpose. All these rain-gauge people are just overly curious. They just really, really want to know how much rain has fallen. And they want to know first-hand.
It doesn\’t matter that they could turn on the TV and find out. They don\’t want to check Weather.com for precise measurements. Rain-gaugers are a distrustful bunch. They are leery of government pronouncements; they don\’t buy what the weatherman\’s selling.
I think once you get to that magic age, especially if you own property, you just want to know how much water is falling out of the sky onto your land.
I experimented with it for a few weeks. I dutifully emptied out the plastic cylinder after each rain. I walked out through the still-wet morning grass to take readings.
But it never did anything for me. 1 inch. 3 inches. 3 1/2 inches.
Call me immature, but it\’s all just water to me. A little water. A lot of water. A little more water.
I just didn\’t care.
So I curled my fingers around the base of the post, and wrenched my rain-gauge out of the ground.
Now it\’s measuring the rainfall at a trash-heap somewhere. And the sad thing is, I\’m sure someone is there to check it.