"Ron Button" wrote in message
...
My Snowden guage ,which resembled an igloo by 0800 this morning ,produced
12.3mm of melt water by this evening ,Patently that must be wrong but what
can one do to ignore the way it melted into the can ?
There was very little drifting..

RonB...
"Steve J" wrote in message
ups.com...
On 8 Feb, 17:24, Norman Lynagh normanthis...@thisbitweather-
consultancy.com wrote:
Does anyone know how this problem is dealt with in the automatic weather
stations in the Met Office synoptic network? Is the rain gauge heated so
that snow is melted as it falls? Or do these stations suffer from the
same problem that I have had with mine today?

Although we are a Met Office climatological station, rather than a
synoptic station, our rain gauge is heated primarily as a precaution
against frost damge, though the snow has quite efficiently melted
today as it fell from 0520hr onwards. Its readings tally very well
with the standard gauge with snow melted in the more traditional
method!

Steve Jackson
Bablake Weather Station
Coventry UK
www.bablakeweather.co.uk



To my knowledge none of the synoptic stations ie RAF stations with tipping
bucket rain guages have heaters in them. Many, most of these are on
automatic over the weekend so collect snow in the funnel waiting for an
observer to melt it with a balloon filled with hot water or the like!

Colin Lush