Gauging rainfall interest

THE Hills hoist at Rob George’s home serves as the perfect location for his backyard weather watching.

The Parramatta Park resident has been recording rainfall in his yard as a hobby for nearly 20 years.

While Mr George doesn’t write down the actual readings from his rain gauge, he says it keeps him interested in amateur meteorology.

“I just get up in the morning and see what we’ve had overnight or the last 24 hours,” he said. “It’s just a fun thing I do.

“When we had all the rainfall during the last couple of weeks, it was fairly full, pretty much every day.

“The last major reading was about 120mm, after the last wet weekend.”

He said his rotary clothesline was the perfect location for his rain gauge.

“You’ve got to keep your gauge out of the garden, otherwise your wife will fill it with water when she’s hosing the garden,” he said.

“So I’ve got mine clipped on top of my Hills hoist, so it’s right up high and not going to be interfered with, by any other source of water.

“I can unclip it every morning, have a look, and clip it back up again.”

Whether they’re manual or electronic, rain gauges are used throughout the Far North by a dedicated group of volunteers, who provide regular readings to the Bureau of Meteorology.

The volunteers send in a monthly record of daily precipitation at the end of each month, while a subset of observers at strategic locations send their observations electronically to the bureau each day.

The bureau says gauges should be read every day as near to 9am as possible.