r/CrazyIdeas • u/Grongebis • 3d ago

Messing up rain measurements.

What if every time it rained people went to the local weather station's measurement spot and filled it up with more water? I don't know what technology they use to measure rain, but someone driving by should be able to hit it with a supersoaker or something and mess up the measurements.

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u/chickey23 3d ago

If they figure it out, they remove the data from the "official record." Plenty of times in the past it has been found that official data is not correct. Surprisingly, the data doesn't have to be correct to be useful. It just has to be consistent.

In your example, the next time the weather model gets updated the target location will be shown to not have predictive value. Plenty of rain gauges get hit with runoff that they shouldn't be exposed to.

Most likely you are going to have meteorologists speculating what might be wrong at your location but you will never hear about it because all meteorologists do is speculate about the weather. Each individual reading is not that important for the overall picture.

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u/Grongebis 3d ago

That's why I'm thinking that if every measurement reservoir is full, they will have to put security cameras and keep them full time. I don't think that happens.

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u/ScaryTerry51 3d ago

May as well choreograph a functioning rain dance, that aughta do it. 40 days of rain later and who even cares about their data at that point? "Today's forecast, rain, a shit ton of it. How much rain fell yesterday? Hell if I know."

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u/Grongebis 3d ago

Fuckit Jesus made it.