What does it mean when the weather reports that there was 1” rainfall?
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It’s measured with a rain gauge which is a funnel or cyclindrical shaped container placed outside. When it rains it collects some rain water and measures how much water was collected. So if rains for 2 hours and fills up with 16mm of water at the end then it meant the average rate of rain was 8mm/hour which is considered heavy rain
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_gauge
Rain gauges are used to measure the rainfall totals. They are simple things that have been around since ancient days. It’s more or less a funnel that feeds into a small tube that is calibrated to certain increments like mm or inches. This allows you to look at it after the rainfall is over and see the measurement as if you were looking at a measurement cup for cooking.
> What does it mean when the weather reports that there was 1” rainfall?
It means that a flat area that doesn’t soak up the water will have water to a depth of 1″. A smaller area will receive less rain in total but also needs less water to reach the same depth, so it’s a wash. You could measure rainfall in something like gallons per acre but inches (or mm) are more intuitive for most people.
Rain gauges generally have a funnel at the top with a narrower measuring cylinder inside. This just means that the cylinder fills to a greater depth which makes it easier to read small amounts of rain accurately. If the area of the funnel is ten times greater than the cross section of the measuring cylinder then the inch markers on the cylinder will be spaced ten inches apart.
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