Rainfall converter
Convert rainfall between millimeters, inches and liters per square meter, and see how much water actually lands on your ground.
That's about the same as a heavy day of rain. On a 10 m by 10 m garden that is about 2,500 liters of water.
What it means
How much water is that?
Rain gauges measure depth on level ground. Wind, slope and nearby trees all change what a gauge actually catches.
Every unit
Your rainfall in every unit
Learn
Three things worth knowing
-
1 mm = 1 liter per square meter
The depth and the volume are the same measurement. Multiply by your area in square meters and you have liters, exactly.
-
The standard gauge
Korea’s cheugugi of 1441 was the first standardized rain gauge, five centuries before national weather services agreed on one.
-
Snow is not rain
Snowfall is reported as settled depth, and melting it gives roughly a tenth as much water. Ten centimeters of snow is about 10 mm of rain.
Shortcuts
Popular rainfall conversions
Background
About measuring rain
Rain is reported as the depth it would stand at on flat ground, which is why the same number works as a volume: one millimeter of rain is exactly one liter on every square meter.
That one fact turns a weather forecast into something you can picture: 10 mm on a 200 m² garden is two thousand liters.