a lot of rain

about 6 am we had 1.93 of inches fall within a 10 minute which figurd out about 10.29 inches per hour. Now that should be about right…for the year…

No wind, but it sounded like hail against the windows. only some flowers of the wife’s are flat. sounds like a project for this morning to avoid dishes…

thats alot of rain in 10 minutes!

that was my thought this morning. I went out and checked the rain bucket to see if something might have blocked the funnel then allowed a lot of water to enter in a hurry, but it is clean and so is the area around the tipping pan. Of course the rain was short lived and we don’t normally have that amount.

However, there are parts of Northern Iowa that get about 3 to 4 inches sometimes, hence a lot of flooding of the farm fields and small creeks, which in turn empty in the Des Moines river and flow this way, but I am up on the higher ground. If it floods up here, Noah will need to build that ark again.

[quote author=aardvark link=topic=9907.msg72344#msg72344 date=1120488484]
about 6 am we had 1.93 of inches fall within a 10 minute

I generated some right away, two are with Wdisplay and the other is with Wlink on the rate.

I am going to have these available, but I need the disk space so if they have gone the way of the electron… I could email them. Oh boy, large downloads.

http://home.mchsi.com/~weatherdata/rain3.jpg
http://home.mchsi.com/~weatherdata/rain1.jpg
http://home.mchsi.com/~weatherdata/Rain2.jpg

Curious to know if you have a manual type rain gauge that you compare with the Davis tipping bucket? With an intensity like that it was bound to underestimate the total. This is not a fault with the Davis but just an inherent problem with tipping bucket gauges in general…they just can’t “keep up” with the rain at those rates.

Actually. no … I checked it with a station in West Des Moines, Adel and Van Meter who all reported similar amounts. I also was awake at that time and it was very intense. I could hardly see the end of the driveway, it was as though someone had a fire hose aiming directly down. Ok some big guy or gal with a bunch of angels…

I also checked the funnel and pan to see if some debris had been in the funnel and let go a bunch of water in a hurry and it is clean all the way. I am going for that this happened. We just had a bunch of rain in a hurry.
Probably caused by that guy in Elgin IL. doing the rain suggestion I gave him a while back ( I know about paybacks)

I’m not trying to dismiss the total as it is likely that you may have had a bit more :o than that due to the intensity. Several years ago I had a good 6 hour rainfall and my tipping bucket measured 5.85 inches when in fact the total for my manual read rain gauge was 6.5 I believe. In any case, those types of rains don’t do a lot for recharging the soil moisture as it just falls too fast to infiltrate but they’re great fun to experience provided your sump pump doesn’t quit. :frowning: Good thing you live on higher ground! Now send some of that our way…but over a nice 12-24 hr duration.

we don’t have a sump which is nice.

I have talked with mother nature and she or he said that it will go you way some day. Kind of like social security plans