If we took all of the rain this past weekend across northern Ohio and calculated the volume in gallons, how much would we have?
First, I eyeballed the area across northern Ohio that received roughly 3/4" of rain by late Sunday morning. The area is 16,000 square kilometers (6200 square miles)...
Convert the "square miles" to "square feet" for each area:
6300 square miles = 173 BILLION square feet (3/4" rain)
2000 square miles = 56 BILLION square feet (1.5" rain)
400 square miles = 11 BILLION square feet (2.5" rain)
First, I calculated the volume of water for the area that received 3/4" of rain:
Volume = length x width x height or AREA x height
VOLUME 1 = 173 BILLION square feet x 3/4" rainfall (0.0625 ft) =
roughly 11 BILLION cubic feet
In order to not double count volumes, I subtracted the starting 3/4" from the second 1.5" to get the HEIGHT for the volume calculation of the second area
VOLUME 2 = 56 BILLION square feet x (1.5" - 3/4") rainfall or 0.0625 ft =
roughly 3.5 BILLION cubic feet
I subtracted second 1.5" from the third 2.5" to get the HEIGHT from the volume of the third area.
VOLUME 3 = 11 BILLION square feet x (2.5" - 1.5") rainfall or 0.083 ft =
roughly 886 MILLION cubic feet
Add the volumes together, we get: ~15.2 BILLION cubic feet
Convert CUBIC FEET to GALLONS gives us: ~114 BILLION GALLONS
That's alot of water!
