Inner Workings

Day 357: There was a project I've been postponing all summer because there was no real need to get it done, but now that we're heading into the rainy months, it was time to replace the degraded post and platform holding the pluviometer. I have a Davis Weather Monitor II station which does not connect to my computer, so every day, I record weather data by hand, having done so with a variety of stations for over forty years with only a few gaps when I needed to replace equipment. To date, the Davis has been the most reliable, although the anemometer is crudded up, and I need a longer ladder in order to get it spinning properly again.

Here you see the inner workings of the pluviometer (the inset shows the device with the collection chamber reinstalled). Rain drips through a hole in the collector until it fills one of the two identical cups at the ends of the rocker arm, triggering a sensor and dumping the water into a drain hole on either end. There is a gap beneath the base plate and the mounting board to allow the water to run off unobstructed, and each cup hold precisely 0.01" of rain. The data accumulated by the pluviometer is transmitted to the station's readout in the house, so there is no need for me to go out in the rain. Occasionally, I have to take leaves and/or fir needles out of the collection basin to allow the rainwater to run freely through the drip hole, but otherwise, there is no maintenance to be performed on this device.