While we were visiting Wendy's parents for the Perseid meteor shower, I noticed they had a rain gauge on their deck. I decided I wanted one of those on my deck, too. So I bought one a little over a week ago and installed it. Here are the daily rain totals since then, in inches:
That's a total of 8.53 inches in just over a week!8/27: 0.9
8/28: 2.35
8/29: 0
8/30: 0
8/31: 0
9/1: 2.38
9/2: 1.75
9/3: 1.15
One of Wendy's coworkers mentioned the "Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network" (CoCoRaHS) where volunteers can submit precipitation measurements. The data is used by the NOAA and lots of other weather groups. It looks cool, but I haven't joined it yet. You need to attend a training session and get a special rain gauge to submit data.
Saturday night we had a major thunderstorm roll through the area. For 2 hours we had constant thunder and lightning. I was trying to go to sleep at the time, and I thought it would never end! The newspaper reported that lightning strikes caused 4 structure fires in the county that night.
Then yesterday (Labor Day), we had a tornado warning! Radar detected rotation in a storm cell as it passed directly over our neighborhood. We closed all the blinds and took shelter in the basement as sirens blared, but fortunately the storm never got worse. There was a lot of rain, but not even much wind.
The forecast calls for another inch of rain tomorrow, but after that it cools off and the rain stops.
This feels more like spring weather than fall!