City Offers Free Rain Gauges in Wake of Record Rainfall

Anyone who lives in Avon Lake knows this year has been a wet one.

So wet that the is giving away rain gauges to residents as part of a program to monitor the exact amount of rainfall throughout the city, said Engineering Manager Joe Reitz.

“We have about 50 (gauges), and we’ll be giving them out until they’re gone,” he said. The free gauges can be picked up at the department’s offices, located in , and residents have to promise to report rainfall events of more than 1 inch, Reitz said.

There is no official weather center in the city – the has an unofficial rain gauge that reports to Weather Underground, but the closest official center is at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport.

Reitz said those two sources provide different data, and coupled with reports that different parts of the city receive different amounts of rain, that makes it tough for city officials to fully understand recent throughout the city.

“For instance, if you’re north of Walker Road, you see different rainfall versus the south side,” Reitz said. “We’re just trying to gather the most accurate information we can.”

Todd Danielson, chief utilities executive at , said the divide isn’t just between north and south.

“We’ve heard that on the Sept. 10 storm, people on the east side of the city saw as much as 3.5 inches of rain, while folks on the west side got just over 2 inches,” Danielson said.

According to data collected from the Library’s weather station, Danielson said Avon Lake has seen more than 48 inches of rainfall since Jan. 1. Last year, the city received 39.5 inches of rain.

“So we still have a month to go, and we’re already about 9 inches over where we were last year,” Danielson said.

And levels measured at Cleveland-Hopkins were off the charts, at 60 inches, breaking 1990’s record of 54 inches.

Danielson said snow provides much less precipitation than rain, and this fall’s unusually-warm weather has largely kept the snow away. That, he said, results in more rainfall.

“If December stays unusually warm, we could have a hugely record-breaking year,” Danielson said.