Rain Rain Rain

With all this rain we have been getting, I was wondering, if they say it will rain 2 inches, does that mean the lakes will fill with 2 inches of water? To me, when they say x number of inches came down, it just seems more than that. Ive left buckets outside in the rain, and they would be overflowing, but the weather report would say it rained an inch or two.

I know theres alot of factors like run off and such, but Im interested on how rain affects water levels in our local bodies of water.

And be safe out on the roads...

Good question I noticed recently after the last rain that our local pond Laguna lake had not moved it is still low. I assume the are doing work on it. This was right after the heaviest rain with no rise at all in water level it seemed weird.

the way they test rain fall is they get a beaker tube about2 inches wide and set it next to a rock or under a tree or anywhere and how ever much water fills the tube up is how they get the inches of rain thats how i learned in class anyway