New Nerd Project!!!

UPDATE 10/03/08!!! It rained 0.01" last night!

Okay, so I haven't posted on here in quite a while so I'm going to update everyone on what little has been going on.

First, my research has been a little difficult lately because I haven't been very motivated to work on it. I think I'm burned out with school and it's starting to show by my laziness. I've been doing a little better lately though.

That's about all. Now on to the title of my post.

So on the 3rd of July, I signed up to help volunteer with the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS, http://www.cocorahs.org/). I was pretty excited and shortly thereafter received my rain gauge to put up so I could start taking measurements for this collaborative project. I have always enjoyed weather and studying it but having worked at the weather center (weather.ou.edu) doing my research for several months, I'm glad I didn't go in to meteorology because it seems really hard with all the difficult math and it sure doesn't pay like an engineering degree. Anyway, I digress.

So I signed up, got my rain gauge, then realized I didn't have a place I could set up my rain gauge because anywhere I could put it would be really inconvenient or would be in a place that could easily be vandalized. So, I was kind of sad I couldn't help out for a while, felt bad about getting the free rain gauge and not using it, and then forgot about it.

Then I realized that if I could mount it on the fence by the pool in our apartment, that would be ideal because the pool was closed after Labor Day and if I could get access to the pool area, all would be well.

I got permission from the office manager to put a lock that I could open on the gate and then went to town on mounting the rain gauge. I bought all the materials for just over $5 and then went to work. I drilled holes and got everything ready to mount and then went to mount it only to realize the bracket I got were too short so I had to drill different holes for the correct brackets which was a setback but it turned out well.

Here are some pictures:

The mounting brackets that were the right size ready to be tightened
What it looks like from behind
Me tightening the brackets
The funnel to catch the rain/snow
The tube to measure the rain. This tube will hold 1" before it spills into the outer container which will hold another 10".
This is how it slides on to the board.
This all set up.

So after I got it mounted, I was excited and started taking my measurements like I should...except it hasn't rained at all. That's okay though because I found on days where I know it didn't rain, I can just look outside my window to check. I realized that the way I had it mounted before though, it was on the side of the fence facing the pool which I thought would be better so people couldn't see it from elsewhere. Then I realized that I couldn't see it from inside my house when it didn't rain so I had to go out this morning and flip it around to the other side of the fence. It only took about 10 minutes to do so it was a quick and easy job.

The view outside my window

Now I just need it to rain. Then I can be useful. I still need to level it out if possible but I think it's somewhat level and won't take much work to change it. If you are interested, you can go to the CoCoRaHS site and look at the information. I'm station number OK-CV-57 and the station name is Norman 1.6 SE.

If anyone is interested in helping out with the project, you can always go to http://www.cocorahs.org/ and sign up to be a volunteer. It's about $20 for the rain gauge and then 5 minutes or less a day. You just have to be consistent.

So, that's one of my many nerd projects. As always, there is another nerd hobby which is amazingrcvideos.blogspot.com but I haven't really had a chance to get any more good video from my plane so it hasn't been updated lately. I do have a new camera that I can take up on my AP plane so one of these days, you should be getting a full HD video of the area. If only I could figure out how to mount it securely on a stick...