By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Remote-control rain gauge in
Moanalua Valley was built in 1979.
Waaaaay back in Moanalua Valley, on the broad banks of the mighty Moanalua Stream, there's a crude hut made of rotting plywood. It has two doors that are stoutly padlocked, and there's nothing on it to indicate what it is, or who it belongs to. So you can forgive folks for thinking it's some sort of outhouse. WatDat on a LARC
But wait -- what's that on the roof? A solar-cell array? And a funnel? If it's an outhouse, you'd have to be pretty desperate or dammed talented to hit the funnel from ground level.
Actually, the funnel is the giveaway. The small building is a LARC, a Limited Automated Remote Collector. In other words, a remote-control rain gauge operated by the U.S. weather service, one of a dozen or so LARCs scattered around Oahu.
Rain goes in the eight-inch funnel and the data "goes by phone line to the forecast office," said Derek Lee Loy, NWS' Cooperative Program Manager.
LARCs transmit data every hour. This station, built in 1979, originally used a "tipping bucket" method that measured water weight; it was automated on May 23, 1989, and has filed hourly reports since then.
Most of the weather service's data still comes from volunteer observers, some of whom "have been out there for 50 or 60 years!" said Lee Loy. "We couldn't do this without them -- they're the backbone of weather data collection. Heroes."
Thanks to the tireless, hourly data filed by the Moanalua LARC and real live collectors for the last 30 years, we can report that the average annual rainfall deep in Moanalua Valley is 39 inches. It's wet. This won't come as a surprise to those who live there.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin.
