Snow water equivalent is the amount of water contained within a snowpack. It is important to have accurate and timely winter precipitation information for agriculture and especially for flood and stream flow forecasting. Moreover, if the density of the snow is known, then the snow water equivalent data can be used to determine snow depth which is an important parameter for avalanche forecasting (McClung and Schaerer, 1993). In this paper, the design of a new tipping bucket rain gauge (TBRG) and an antifreeze-based attachment have been discussed which would measure rain as well as snow precipitation. The TBRG and the antifreeze-based attachment have been designed to reduce the shortcomings of commercial TBRGs and antifreeze-based attachments. Our TBRG provides faster rain and snow water equivalent data. The highest measurement rate for rain and snow water equivalent is found to be 375 mm/hr and 16.4 mm/hr respectively. The design considerations, field and laboratory trials and results of the TBRG and the antifreeze-based attachment have been discussed in detail in this paper.Keywords: tipping bucket rain gauge; TBRG; proximity sensor; antifreeze attachment; snow precipitation measurement.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Das, R.K.
Design of an improvised tipping bucket rain gauge
45Research and Development Organisation, Government of India. Instruments developed by him include: contact-less tipping bucket rain gauge, improvised anti-freeze-based attachment for tipping bucket rain gauges, stand-alone snow temperature profiler, hand-held portable snow temperature profiler, instrument for measurement of extinction coefficient of snow, datalogging system for radiometers, solar charging system for WSN motes and 3-axis sonic wind sensor.Neelam Rup Prakash received her BE, ME and PhD from the PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh, India. Presently, she is working as Professor in the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering at the PEC. She is an expert in the field of digital system design, computer aided diagnostic systems and digital communication. She has guided more than ten PhD and MTech theses.
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