For the interest of the general Public I must give certain points on how rainfall is measured. First of all according to WMO criteria
[1] There should be atleast one raingauge in every 250 Sq.Km area in plains and at least one raingauge for every 100 sq.km area in hilly areas.
[2] In India Fibre Glass Reinforced Polyester (FRP) Raingauge of diameter 159.6 mm and collector area 200 sq.cm is in use for the measurements of rainfall.
[3] This 200 sq.cm collector area raingauge must have relevant 20mm measure glass.
[4] Rainfall measurements should have to be taken at 0300Z [0830 hrs IST] daily without fail to enable comparison.
[5] The exposure of raingauge must be good.
Most of the raingauges maintained at vantage meteorological locations are NOT maintained by IMD. State government is maintaining such raingauges. Often the raingauge and measure glass combination may NOT be correct. Thus will lead to distorted or enhanced rainfall amount. {As happened in Chinna Kallar in 2007 ; in that year the annual rainfall was reported as 7000 mm because of the irrelevant measure glass.} In Agumbe too there were instances when the measurements were reported wrong.
In the light of the above I wish to state that Meteorologically vantage location should be properly assessed by scientific community and wish that Government should come out with rigid plans to deploy men and material at vantage locations to augment Disaster Management.
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