Green Tip #52: Rain Turbines

This is another one of those Green Tips that might actually be more on the "Green" side than the "Impractical" side. Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be giving tips that aren't useful for the every day person, but sometimes one or two slip through the crack and might actually help the environment. Don't hold it against me, please...

A few days ago, it was raining really hard here in Toledo. And as I was walking to my class and getting completely soaked, I was growing more and more miserable. To make things worse, I had a presentation to give that night and I was wearing dressier clothes and I hate getting my nice pants soaking wet. That and I wasted more electricity to run the hand dryer in order to dry my pants off. I felt like I had betrayed Mother Nature by wasting electricity.

But all of a sudden, I saw the silver lining on the clouds! Not literally, mind you. I was way too dark by then for there to be even a trace of any lining on the clouds, let alone a silver one. What if there was a way to harness the power of the rain in the same way that people harness wind or tidal forces? I don't have the technical expertise to figure out the details of it, but wouldn't it be possible to have a vertical axis wind turbine that runs when it's windy but catches the rain and is pushed even harder, thus generating more electricity?

That's just my theory. It wouldn't be good for a steady source of power because of how unpredictable the rainfall would be, but it would supplement the energy generated by the wind turbines. Furthermore, couldn't you put turbines on the gutters to generate electricity as the water flows down into the yard?

If someone knows about something like this that already exists, let me know. Or if it doesn't exist but you have an idea of how it could be made, go ahead and come up with a prototype. It would be relatively simple to install. Now from now on whenever it rains, it doesn't have to be such a depressing event! If only there were something to do about snow...