Snow depth meter for moderate snowfall

Enjoy the warmth of your house, have a look through the window and get a quick reading of the snow depth outside!

For the first time in a very long while, we get a fair amount of snow here in northern Bavaria (actually all over Germany, we are not even hardest hit here).

So I did this design in a rush this evening, because it was already heavily snowing outside. In the two hours that it took my three printers working in parallel to print these parts, we had accumulated 10cm of snow already. At least another 5 are forecasted for tonight... we will see.

As time was of essence for getting this thing out in the garden, it is not a very sophisticated design. The ground rods are simply 12mm by 5mm wooden bars that I cut to 220mm of length each.

Sawing the bars here at my desk was easy, thanks to my miniature vice with furniture friendly table clamp. Get it here if you don't have it yet:
https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/53471

The bars are simply glued to the middle section with superglue. In the foot of the scale bar, there are two 3.5mm holes, which I used to quickly cut M4 threads in and fixed the scale bar to the complete food with two M4x10 screws. Of course I could have glued everything together as well, but I want to take this thing apart when the snow is gone. It will probably take years until we get another good snowfall.

Have fun everyone, and take care for yourself and for others!

P.S.: I know that many of you measure their snow depth in feet or even in meters. We are not used to that much snow, so a 20cm maximum scale will do for us.

Print instructions

Simply print all parts from the material of your choosing. No supports are needed and 20% infill turned out be just fine.

Glue 4 wooden sticks to the center part of the foot a shown in the picture. You may cut M4 threads into the foot part of the scale bar, or you may just heat your screws up with a hair dryer and screw them in. You can simply glue all parts together, but in that case the part is bulky to store over the summer.