The application of the theory of regionalized variables to raingage network design and evaluation is introduced using 32 raingages in Tan-sui River watershed as an example. Dimensionless variogram of hourly rainfall was established to separate the influence of rainfall intensity and geographic location on the spatial variability of hourly rainfall. A sequential algorithm was implemented to calculate and rank the kriging variance of each individual raingage using all other gages. Then, the priority of adding or removing raingages was established in reference to the kriging variances. Finally, the global kriging variance was used to determine the reasonable number of raingages that should be retained and basic raingages which are required to detect the trend of rainfall spatial variation.