State climatologist calls for more weather nerds to join rain, hail and snow network
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Another chance for severe weather arrives in Minnesota on Thursday, and one of the ways the National Weather Service will get information on its aftermath is from regular people’s backyards.
More than 20,000 people nationwide volunteer as part of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS. And the Minnesota Climatology Office is hoping more people can join in the effort.
State Climatologist Luigi Romolo says the information is “crucial” and “invaluable.”
All you need is a 4-inch rain gauge.
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It’s especially helpful in the wake of federal funding cuts to NOAA.
“We have about 200 to 250 National Weather Service stations across the entire state of Minnesota. That isn't a lot in a state that has 87 counties, and some of them don't report fastidiously, so we rely on these volunteers to fill in the gaps,” Romolo said. On Wednesday, “a day when it barely rained in Minnesota, we had 950 volunteers report. Most of them reported zero precipitation. It’s incredible. It almost triples the amount of dots on the map that we would normally have.”
MPR News Meteorologist Sven Sundgaard echoed the importance of CoCoRaHS.
“It is absolutely essential information. We can't possibly cover the state or the country otherwise,” Sundgaard said. “We have some pretty good estimates with satellites; that's how we can estimate rainfall in the Amazon, for example. But nothing beats real-time data on the ground.”
Learn more at CoCoRaHS.org.
