14 July 2008
CoCoRahs-What A Great Idea
Posted by Dan Satterfield
You may have heard me mention CoCoRahs on a weather cast a couple of times, and did not pay much attention. Well you should have! If you are the type of person who is interested in science (Why are you reading this if you’re not? You certainly cannot be expecting news about that Brittany person) then you really should check it out.
CoCo Rahs stands for community Collaborative Rain and Hail Study. What it boils down to is this. With the Internet, we can now collect very valuable rain, hail, snow data from across the nation in real time!
This is not only valuable to synoptic forecasters like myself, but to climatologists and hydrologists as well. Both now, and in the future!
It takes 5 minutes a day at most. Less if there has been no rain or snow. Best of all, you will have the good feeling of knowing that your making a valuable contribution to science!
You will have to fork out $28 for a rain gauge but that is the only cost. Just go online and type in your precip..hit submit and you’re done! The reason for the special rain gauge is simple. Your gauge is not accurate! Hold on you say. You have a $500 tipping bucket gauge running on solar power! Nope, the plastic CoCoRahs gauge is better. It is even better than the VERY expensive gauges that NOAA puts in at airports!
Have I talked you into it?? Check out cocorahs.org and look at the power point below!
Here is a link to a power point with tons more info:
Thanks, Dan for mentioning this. I am the CoCoRaHs coordinator for Cullman County. It is a tremendous program. Maybe a good way to increase awareness and usage is through science departments in local middle and high schools. And I couldn’t agree more about the rain gauge accuracy.
No problem Mike. It is such a worthwhile project. I would hope more young people get involved. It is a great introduction to science. Most participants likely do not realize how this data will be used for many years in the future by researchers who are not even born yet!
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!