I want to re-visit this thread, as I have some interesting data collected.
I've been comparing the precipitation on my VP2 vs my CoCoRaHS rain gauge since mid-September. Contrary to what I'd read here and on other forums, my VP2 was reading higher than the CoCORaHS gauge. Usually in the 5-12% range, excluding the extremes where the gauge tips and the's nothing in the manual gauge. I ignore those conditions.
However, since installing my reptile heater cable to the inner cone to melt snow, I've seen this trend flip the other way. I'm now seeing significantly less precipitation on the VP2 compared to the CoCoRaHS gauge. I have to attribute this to some of the precipitation evaporating before running down into the buckets.
I've left the heater on 24 hours a day so that it would be thoroughly warm when snow arrives. We're in that time of year that the rain could turn to snow at any time.
I installed my heater cable on the inner cone, like Rick (Weather Goose) did back on page 4, not to the inside of the foil insulation like the OP shows.
Here's a link to the Google Docs spreadsheet where I've tracked this data. (All numbers are positive, so you'll have to look at the CoCoRaHS vs VP2's "today's rainfall" to see which is higher.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhiOaCqzSbmedGtwSTdnbEpodTV3UDUzVFViRU8wa0EComments? Thoughts? As expected?
Steve