The accuracy of a variety of rain gauges was evaluated at the University at Albany, Atmospheric Sciences Research Center’s (ASRC) Whiteface Mountain Lodge, which hosts a National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) site that is collocated with a New York State MESONET site and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) / ASRC atmospheric monitoring site.  During the period May 2017 through July 2017 daily precipitation data was collected. Five precipitation gauges were compared: an NADP installed OTT Pluvio²L weighing-bucket rain gauge with single Alter shield windscreen, NYS Mesonet OTT Pluvio²L weighing-bucket rain gauge with double Alter shield windscreen, University at Albany, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences OTT Parsivel² Distrometer, The National Weather Service’s COOP observer High Sierra Electronics 8” non-recording rain gauge, and the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) 4” rain gauge.

During the three month period the NADP gauge measured a total rain accumulation 19.09 inches while the NYS Mesonet gauge reported 18.63 inches, a 2.5% difference. All other gauges had data gaps so total 3 month precipitation was not available. Historical mean NADP precipitation at this site for this three month period is 9.67 inches, 2017 was twice the mean. Comparison of the four gauges making direct measurements (COOP, CoCoRaHS, NYS Mesonet, and NADP) show remarkable consistency with differences generally below 5%. However, the Parsivel disdrometer had a high bias of 20% - 30% throughout the measurement period, suggesting that while it is useful for precipitation rate and drop size distributions, integrated volume is not sufficiently accurate for monitoring precipitation amounts.