Where I live it does not rain a lot. When it does the news always say that it rain 1/8 of an inch or so, but I can see that my pool has increased 2 or 3 inches.
I don’t think this could be from runoff as the edges if the pool are angles away from the pool to prevent runoff from entering the pool. I have also had buckets left out where there is significantly more water than was reported.
Any reasoning for this? Could the rain vary so much that the weather station is just getting a significantly different amount of rain?
Thanks
In: Planetary Science
Measuring rain is quite simple, just put out an empty cup and however many inches get filled up in the cup is how much rain fell, but what is also important is *where* that measurement is taken. The measurements you see on the news usually come from the closest weather observation station, which more often than not is located at the closest airport to your city. Having very accurate & up-to-date weather reports is obviously very important for take off & landings, so that’s usually what your local news casters are listening to when they are looking for weather data like the amount of precipitation that fell.
So if you happened to be located right in the brunt of a storm and got tons of rain, but the closest airport was 30 miles away on the edge of the storm, that’s more than likely what explains the discrepancy in what was reported versus what you observed.
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