CoCoRaHS Information
What IS CoCoRaHS?
You can let the National Weather Service know how
much rain, hail, or snow you've measured in your back yard! The
Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow (CoCoRaHS) Network is in place across both Alabama and Tennessee. CoCoRaHS is a unique, non-profit, community-based
network of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds working together
to measure and map precipitation (rain, hail and snow). The program
will help meteorologists, hydrologists, and researchers study
the variability of precipitation across the Tennessee Valley,
and the accumulated data will be available to anyone with a use
or interest in precipitation data.
How did CoCoRaHS get started?
CoCoRaHS started because of a devastating flood that struck Fort
Collins, Colorado in 1998. When researchers went back to examine
the precipitation data, they discovered that the rainfall leading
to the flood missed all of the official gages. Colorado State Climatologist
Nolan Doeskin developed a new volunteer observing network to fill
in the gaps between official gages called CoCoRaHS.
Sounds great! How can I sign up?
There are three options available, depending on where you live
and the measuring equipment you have.
- To find out more, visit the CoCoRaHS
web site at http://www.cocorahs.org.
If you'd like to sign up, just visit the web site and click
on
"Join CoCoRaHS" to register your backyard or schoolyard
as a reporting site. Once you register and begin to report,
your observations will become part of the record and will be
plotted on maps of your county and state. You can view the maps
and see how your observation fits in with your neighbors.
If you decide to sign up, we encourage you to go through the online
training located on the CoCoRaHS
web site. It will detail proper gage siting techniques as
well as other program information. Note that you will
need to provide your own rain gage (you can purchase
one through CoCoRaHS, and more details can be found on the CoCoRaHS
site).
- If you live in Madison or Limestone Counties,
there is a local metro-area precipitation network called CHARM
(Cooperative Huntsville Area Rainfall Measurements) operated
by NASA. Signing up for and reporting to CHARM will feed your
data to both CHARM and to CoCoRaHS! Click
here to find out more about CHARM and its interaction with
CoCoRaHS.
- If you would like to participate but also have a thermometer
available, we encourage you to sign up to become an NWS
Huntsville Backyard Observer! More
information on this program is available here.
Note: If you are already reporting your data to NWS Huntsville
as a backyard or cooperative observer, or if you are a member of
the CHARM (Cooperative Huntsville Area Rainfall Measurements) network,
your data is already being received. You are still welcome to join
CoCoRaHS if you wish to to view your data on the CoCoRaHS webpage
though.
How can I find out more?
If you'd like to know more about local CoCoRaHS efforts, feel free
to contact the National Weather Service office in Huntsville, call the office at 256-890-8503.
To find out more about CoCoRaHS, visit the website at http://www.cocorahs.org.
For more information about the CHARM network, visit their website
at http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/charm/.
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