Tales from the world of weather

Happy Monday! To liven up your day, here is a sordid tale of rain gauge sabotage and other dastardly deeds that came to our attention recently. It has it all: fraud, blackmail, prison escapes and U.S. Marshals: https://www.agweb.com/news/business/rain-robbers-how-four-farmers-faked-drought-and-stole-millions-crop-insurance

Anyone who loves good data would be horrified to have this happen to their rain gauge as accurate rain readings are of such importance both in real time and as part of a set of historic data built up over years. However, there isn’t much chance of a copy cat crime here in New Zealand. Besides, we can’t imagine that our customers would take long to figure out someone was tampering with their rain readings!