It's raining cats and dogs!

No, it's not raining now.  Our most recent rain was last Thursday.  By late Thursday morning, all the clouds had left to offer were light sprinkles.  However, our rooftop weather station nonetheless suddenly went berserk.

When I looked to see if the weather gauge had recorded anything more than 0.05/inch for the day, I saw the numbers for both the daily rain and the rain year were rapidly increasing despite no evidence there was any rain outdoors.  Note the byline shown at the bottom of the screen, which actually said "It's raining cats and dogs,"  something I'd never seen before even during real downpours.

As the light sprinkles clearly didn't produce twenty-two inches of rain within minutes, my husband went up on the roof to take a look at our weather station.  He removed some debris and changed the battery in the unit.  We reset the data to the the last setting we knew to be correct, only to have the readings almost immediately jump again (without any noticeable rainfall).  At some point, the measure of the rain also somehow changed from inches to millimeters.  The next morning, this is what I found:

The system was no longer reporting any daily rain but look at the rain year total: 1,715.3 millimeters.  That's almost 68 inches!

My husband contacted the man who'd sold the weather station to him to see if he could account for the problem.  He offered one suggestion but my husband questioned it as, if that were the problem, it should've also affected the temperature and humidity readings, which it hadn't.  The seller agreed with my husband at that point.  They concluded that the sensor that tracks current rain may have been damaged somehow.  For the time being, we've reset the rain gauge again and will wait to see if the next rainstorm causes a repeat of the problem.

The weather station was a Christmas gift to me from my husband several years ago.  When I asked whether we should simply replace the unit, I was surprised to learn that a replacement would cost about $600!  So, if it happens again, he'll look into the possibility of replacing just the sensor.  For now, I have a backup plan.

I bought a simple plastic rain gauge, which I set out in my cutting garden

To the best of our knowledge, our current rain total for the 2026 "water year" (counted from October 1, 2025) is 10.64 inches in our location.  The nearby valleys, foothills, and mountain areas got much more.  We may have gotten a bit more at our location than we recorded in November as our gauge was temporarily clogged.  I found a monthly count for my zip code yesterday, which shows a total of 13.13 inches.  If correct, that isn't horrible, even if it turns out to be all we get for the current water year.

We've left our last recorded data as is for now as we can't definitively say that our total replicates that for the area defined by our zip code

There seems to be little chance of rain in the foreseeable future.  Our rainy season generally comes to an end by mid-April, which could mean that 10.64 (or 13.13) inches may be all we'll get until the next water year begins in October.  Last year's total was worse, though, at only 7.03 inches.  At least my rain storage tanks are full for the time being.

Meanwhile, there's snow in the nearby mountains again.

Until the stretch of rainstorms in February, snow totals statewide had been running low

And there are California poppies already blooming in my garden.

I had just a few poppies in total last year

All material © 2012-2026 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party