How to Fill Out the Intense Weather Report

The purpose of the Intense Weather Report is to report large storm events during the day as they happen. If during a storm you realize that there are strong winds, flooding, or the rain is coming down particularly hard, then plan to fill out the form when the storm ends or reduces to low intensity.

Be careful, however: if you record rainfall from the NeRAIN rain gauge onto this form, it does not automatically get included with the value that you will read the following morning. For example, if the rain gauge has 1.5 inches of rain after a half hour of intense rainfall, you would empty the gauge and submit the Intense Weather Report for that date and time. Then, if the following morning (at your regular time, around 7 AM) you read 0.5 inches of rain, you would sum the two values and report a total of 2 inches of rain.
To demonstrate how to fill out the form, let’s assume the following:

  1. You’ve read your rain gauge around 7 AM (somewhere between 5 AM and 9 AM) so you know the gauge is empty.

  2. The sky darkens and the winds pick up between 10 and 11 AM, and it starts to sprinkle.

  3. At noon, you glance at the rain gauge when you break for lunch and see a few hundredths, maybe 0.05 inches.

  4. Suddenly it seems the sky opens up and the rain comes down “in buckets” or it’s “raining cats and dogs” out there.

  5. At 12:45 PM your lunch break is over and the rain has slowed to a light sprinkle, so you decide to empty your rain gauge and fill out the Intense Weather Report form.

    1. You measure out 1.5 inches from your rain gauge.

    2. You note that a neighbor’s tree is uprooted and leaning into the street.

    3. Down the hill you see a car stalled in the intersection, with water up over the tires.

You fill out the form as follows:

Example Form

Remember that when you read the rain gauge the following morning, your goal is to report precipitation that fell during the prior 24 hours. Therefore, you’ll need to add the 7 AM reading to the 1.5 inches you measured while filling out the Intense Weather Report.