What's the weight of all that rain?

What's the weight of all that rain?

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AJS-

15,366 posts

236 months

Thursday 1st October 2015
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It's one of those things where the metric system makes it really easy. At least comparatively.

I worked it out once while stuck in an interminable rain induced traffic jam in Bangkok. 1,000cc is a litre, so every 10mm of rain is (100x100) 10,000cc or 10 litres of water, which weighs 1kg per litre. So 10 kg of water. When you times it by the amount of rain you get in these tropical storms it's a mind boggling amount of water. I would think the bed of my pickup has taken a couple of tons this week already.

I tried working it out in imperial but ending up actually arriving where I was going before I even got half way. Bloody French, making my traffic jams less exciting.

So now it's rainy season again - 1 square yard is 36X36=1,269 square inches. Covered to a depth of 1/2" is 648 cubic inches of water, which divided by 277.42 (cu. in. per gallon) is 2.34 gallons of water. A gallon, uncharacteristically neatly, weighs 10 Lbs so I can put the calculator away and say a cubic yard of water at 1/2" depth weighs 23 Lbs and 6 oz.

TwigtheWonderkid

43,370 posts

150 months

Saturday 3rd October 2015
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Programme about Patagonia last night said the glacier there contains 300 trillion tonnes of fresh water yikes

That's quite a few Olympic pools' worth.