Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Measuring rainfall manually - Challenges and Dilemmas

Rainfall is being measured at thousands of places in India using the Symons Rainfall Gauge. SaveTheHills has been recording rainfall for the past 10 years or so in this region. We have also distributed these rainfall gauges at many places around Darjeeling-Kalimpong district and have been receiving data from these locations. The daily rainfall data for each month is collected and published on our blog for everyone to use. Yet now we are faced with a dilemma on the accuracy of the data we have published. Recently we received an extremely high rainfall record (329mm in 24hrs) from Mangzing (Gorubathan), Kalimpong where we had given one rainfall gauge. Such extreme rainfall would have triggered landslides yet none were reported. This made us curious as to the accuracy of the rainfall gauge. We performed a small experiment taking three rainfall gauges, one used by us (Borosil) the other used in Mangzing (Exsil), and the third used in a school (Plastic 10mm container). The results were alarming.

Attached below is the video explaining our experiment and the results. Have a look.

Shreya Gurung
Praful Rao

Darjeeling District
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya


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