All:
Its a dark and stormy night here in Maryland (of course that could describe almost any night this summer, wettest summer since 1906!)…
My setup: A Peet Bros Ultimeter 2100 with an “Ultimeter 2100 Pro” heated (unplugged for the summer) rain gauge.
The Problems: The Peet gauge has logged nill, zippy, squat, zed for last two rain events (0.19" and 0.05" measured manually). Tested the connectivity at the control unit, OK there. Outside to the Peet Gauge mounted on a 2m post… Unscrewed the funnel cover and… ouch ouch ouch ouch… ants everywhere, in the cover, on my hand, in the funnel, you get the picture. The little so-and-so’s has built their nest right there in electronics, probably shorting out the circuit board. Mind you, these are yankee black ants, not those evil Texican fire ants so it could have been worse. I got the pesticide and the canned air and did what I could to clean out the electronics.
Did a drip test to see if the gauge would log precip, but no joy. I assume I’ll be contacting my friends at Peet with another sale.
Moral of story, take time to inspect and clean your equipment before the jungle reclaims it!
Cheers,
DaveH