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I was reading an article on NHK News Web Easy and came across the following sentence:

いつもの年の8月に降る雨と同じか2倍ぐらいの雨が、24時間に降りました。

I think the sentence means something like "Around 2x August's usual amount of rain fell in 24 hours."

But I can't break down the meaning of the individual parts of the sentence very well, and I am particularly confused as to the meaning of と同じか.

I think と同じ means "the same as", so いつもの年の８月に降る雨と同じ would mean "The same as the usual yearly August rain", and then ２倍ぐらいの雨が "rain of around two times (that)", but how か connects these two clauses eludes me.

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The か here carries the meaning of or.

同じか２倍 can be broken down into 同じ (same), か (or, in this case), and ２倍 (double). Therefore, it can be interpreted as "Around the same, or double the amount of rainfall [...]"

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    I'm familiar with the use of か meaning "or" in some cases, but in the context of this sentence it doesn't seem to make much sense. The amount of rainfall was either the same と同じ, or 2x ２倍. Is it maybe expressing a range, anywhere from the same to 2x? I would think that the reporter would know how much more rainfall there was and be specific about it. It's like me saying there was maybe as much sun today as yesterday, or maybe even 2 times as much. The measures are completely disparate.
    – cringemit
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 12:48
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    @RobinDenton - They could be talking about multiple regions of which some had about the same amounts of rainfall as usual and others about twice as much.
    – aguijonazo
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 15:42

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