The buckets are calibrated to collect 0.01 inches of rainfall, then the weight of the water in the bucket causes the bucket to tip passing an attached sensor through a switch and sending a pulse signal to the data collector. Each signal is then date and time stamped by the data collector in one minute increments. The information in the data collector is extracted monthly with a small personal computer and a data file is created for each rain gauge. This data provides rainfall amount, duration and intensity for each rain gauge site. City Hall Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge City Hall rain gauge Tipping bucket mechanism.
Information is stored in a data logger for downloading by a portable computer.
City of Tallahassee, Florida.