Development of a Novel Precipitation Measurement Device

Measuring rainfall amounts and rates is of interest in many disciplines, including atmospheric science, weather prediction, and agriculture. The goal of this project is to create a device that can measure rain accurately over time. Many current rain measurement devices have negative features like the ability to get clogged, having to manually empty, manual recording (writing down) a measurement, and errors in measurement. To eliminate some of these problems, we describe the development of a device will measure the weight of rain hitting the top of the device rather than just measuring the volume of rain. We contend that this new device will be able to eliminate many of those negative attributes of current devices by having the ability to measure the data remotely, not having anything that needs emptying, not having any possibility of getting clogged, and many other features that will be added in the process of creating this device. This device will use a load cell to measure the weight of the rain that hits the top of a cone-like device that will be attached to the top of said load cell. The load cell will give the rain measurement device the ability to connect to some sort of data collection device in order to store and display data as needed. We describe our prototyping effort and results achieved.<br type="_moz" />