Figures All Wet

Normally the most level-headed and urbane of Americans, Californians tend to lose their sense of perspective when the subject is the weather. A recent Times article by Nancy Reed on a rainy spell is a case in point. In it, rainfall measurements around the San Diego area are reported to the hundredth of an inch.

When one considers that a hundredth of an inch is scarcely a hair’s breadth, that the meniscus effect makes precise location of a water level difficult and that most rain gauges contain floating debris that further complicates the measurement, is not the quoting of rainfall to the hundredth if an inch a but much?

H.W. ANDERSON

La Jolla