page_title: Rain gauge
section_title: Tipping bucket rain gauge
hierarchical_section_title: Rain gauge / Types / Tipping bucket rain gauge
caption_attribution_description: Close up of a chart used with a tipping bucket rain gauge. Each vertical line is 10 minutes and each horizontal line is 0.4 mm. Each upward step of the ink line is 0.2 mm.
context_page_description: A rain gauge is an instrument used by meteorologists and hydrologists to gather and measure the amount of liquid precipitation over an area in a predefined period of time.
context_section_description: The tipping bucket rain gauge consists of a funnel that collects and channels the precipitation into a small seesaw-like container.  After a pre-set amount of precipitation falls, the lever tips, dumping the collected water and sending an electrical signal. An old-style recording device may consist of a pen mounted on an arm attached to a geared wheel that moves once with each signal sent from the collector. In this design, as the wheel turns the pen arm moves either up or down leaving a trace on the graph and at the same time making a loud "click". 
  The tipping bucket rain gauge is not as accurate as the standard rain gauge, because the rainfall may stop before the lever has tipped. When the next period of rain begins it may take no more than one or two drops to tip the lever. This would then indicate that pre-set amount has fallen when only a fraction of that amount has actually fallen.  Tipping buckets also tend to underestimate the amount of rainfall, particularly in snowfall and heavy rainfall events. The advantage of the tipping bucket rain gauge is that the character of the rain (light, medium, or heavy) may be easily obtained. Rainfall character is decided by the total amount of rain that has fallen in a set period (usually 1 hour) and by counting the number of pulses clicks in a 10-minute period the observer can decide the character of the rain. Algorithms may be applied to the data as a method of correcting the data for high-intensity rainfall.
  Modern tipping rain gauges consist of a plastic collector balanced over a pivot. When it tips, it actuates a switch (such as a reed switch) which is then electronically recorded or transmitted to a remote collection station.
  Tipping gauges can also incorporate elements of weighing gauges whereby a strain gauge is fixed to the collection bucket so that the exact rainfall can be read at any moment. Each time the collector tips, the strain gauge (weight sensor) is re-zeroed to null out any drift.
  To measure the water equivalent of frozen precipitation, a tipping bucket may be heated to melt any ice and snow that is caught in its funnel.  Without a heating mechanism, the funnel often becomes clogged during a frozen precipitation event, and thus no precipitation can be measured.  Many Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) units use heated tipping buckets to measure precipitation.
caption: Close up of a tipping bucket rain gauge recorder chart
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