Want rain measured where you live? Here's how to do it

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- As recent months have brought welcome rain back to Central Texas, you may be interested in finding out how much you have in your yard. Knowing how much it rains could be very helpful in your conservation efforts, while you try and keep your lawn and plants alive.

KXAN Meteorologist Nick Bannin spoke with Jason Runyen, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office that serves Austin and San Antonio. Runyen explained what to look for when shopping for a rain gauge and how best to position it.

Nick Bannin, KXAN Meteorologist: Rainfall amounts can vary greatly depending on an individual's location. For people wanting to measure very accurately the amount that's fallen in their backyard, what's the best way to do that?

Jason Runyon, NWS Austin/San Antonio Meteorologist: Well, there's two most important things to measure accurate rainfall on your property. The first thing is you have to have a high quality rain gauge. The second thing is you have to assign it or place it correctly on your property.

Bannin: Where can you get a good high quality rain gauge?

Runyen: So there's several options available online where you can purchase automated rain gauges. You can also go to your local hardware store, purchase automated rain gauges and also manually read rain gauges. It's important to note that for the National Weather Service's purposes of using the data, we need a rain gauge that can measure rainfall down to 1/100 of an inch, pretty high accuracy.

Bannin: Jason, you mentioned the old fashioned rain gauges can be the most accurate. What does one look like?

Runyen: Yeah, so I have one with me. Here is our four inch rain gauge. The four inches describes the width of the funnel on the top of it. These can be purchased online through COCORAHS They're very accurate. There's a funnel on the top, there's a tube in the middle of it, the rain goes into the middle of that to measures one inch of rain down to 1/100 of an inch. When you fill up that tube, it overflows into this bigger tube. That bigger tube can hold up to 10 more inches. So this whole gauge can hold 11 inches of rainfall.

Bannin: Where should you put your rain gauge once you purchase one?

Runyen: You want to avoid putting it next to any structures like right up against your house or right up against like your deck or your patio, away from trees. Generally speaking, we'd like to have your gauge sited at least twice as far away from the object [height]. So if you have a roof that's 10 feet tall, you want to place your gauge 20 feet away from it.