The Grahamstown Wetwatchers are a group of volunteers who send their rainfall records to italGrocott’s Mail/ital every week.
The Grahamstown Wetwatchers are a group of volunteers who send their rainfall records to italGrocott’s Mail/ital every week.
Those who have been measuring Grahamstown’s rainfall for many decades are affectionately known as ‘Pluviomasters’. They love doing it and long-term records are very useful for water managers, as well as for making predictions about the best time of year to plant crops, repair roof leaks or simply to keep an umbrella handy.
If you’d like to be more in touch with local weather, now is the time to get that essential piece of equipment: a rain gauge. Or, as our Pluviomasters prefer to call it, a pluviometer.
Here’s what you do:
1. Buy a rain gauge in a hardware shop (around R40) or make your own (Google ‘how to make your own rain gauge’).
2. Place it 1.2 metres above the ground (attached to a sturdy fence post is a good idea), perfectly upright and in an open area (with no trees or overhanging objects).
3. Check the rain gauge daily (our Pluviomasters do this at 8am each day). Look at it while it’s perfectly vertical, with your eye in line with the top of the water level.
4. Record all rainfall in a file or notebook, including the date and the amount of rainfall in millimetres before emptying the rain gauge. You can use the rainwater to top up a car battery or steam iron.
5. To get the weekly amount, add up all the rainfall measurements from Monday through to Sunday.
Find more useful info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_gauge and www.irc.nl/page/37471/. Or for a free download: “Roofwater Harvesting: A Handbook for Practitioners” by Thomas and Martinson.
