OK, that title might be a little harsh. After all it's not Trump's fault that power companies feel like they can successfully ask a GOP run government for exemptions that would allow poisonous runnoff from the coal-ashpits they've been stockpiling for decades and doing nothing about to drain into natural waterways that many downriver communities rely on for drinking water. It's not his fault that development of more sustainable in the long run, potentially less polluting, renewable energy production has been effectively hog-tied. It's not his fault that air-quality standards have been rolled back by over 30% while the EPA's incentive to enforce even those lax standards has been gutted.
Oh wait. Yes it is!
Smartest man in the room my smelly hind end! No, no - I need to roll things back a little here. After all, I assume he manages to go to the bathroom all by himself one or two times a day.
But, bathroom or not, that doesn't change the fact that we're talking about a man who said the California wildfires were their own fault because they weren't out there raking up the forest floor and keeping it clean. - Of course that from a man that's never set foot off pavement unless it's on a manicured golf course.
Anywaaay - before I go off on an irrational rant (too late!) -
These are 10" rain gauges.
The central tube is 1/10th the area of the collection funnel which means 1 inch of rain fills the 10 inch tall central tube making measurements accurate to 0.01 inches easy. Once the central tube fills it overflows into the larger outer tube.
I've gone back over 17 years of our records and count 6 times that we've had over 11 inches of rain within a month, requiring a mid-month emptying. (in April 2009 we got over 12 inches in an 8 hour period!) Usually I record the rainfall once a month by removing the collection funnel, lifting the central tube out, dumping it, then decanting any rainwater in the large tube back into the central tube, keeping track of how many times I have to dump the central tube.
When new, the gauge on the right looked like the one on the left. That's what 17 years of sun and polution exposure 15 air miles from a coal-fired power plant looks like. And we are NOT even downwind of the prevailing winds!
Notice I've avoided the question of what my lungs look like after 70+ years of this same human crap. That's because after 12 CT scans over the past 3 years I KNOW what they look like. Surprisingly good concidering that we are such poor stewards of our one and only environment.
