A novel fiber Bragg grating (FBG) rain gauge is proposed in this paper to achieve high precision rainfall measurement. One core sensitive FBG, a temperature compensation FBG and a mechanical transition system construct this novel FBG rain gauge. Sensing principle of this FBG rain gauge is explained in detail, and its theoretical calculation model is also established, which shows that the relationship between center wavelength of sensitive FBG and external rainfall has very good linearity. To verify its detection performance, the calibration experiment on one prototype of this FBG rain gauge is carried out. After experiment data analysis, the detection precision of this FBG rain gauge is 15.4 μm which is almost two orders of magnitude higher than that of the existing rainfall measurement device. The experimental data confirm that this FBG rain gauge can achieve rainfall measurement with high precision.