Share your backyard rainfall totals with the world through CoCoRaHS

I know we’ve got a few “weather nuts” in the reading audience, and I ran across something during the past week that some of you weather enthusiasts might be interested in hearing about it.

In Tuesday of last week’s Mobile Press-Register, WKRG News 5 weatherman Alan Sealls mentioned in his weather column that individuals with a rain gauge can join the CoCoRaHS network in order to share their backyard rainfall totals with the world.

“It helps meteorologists and all of society, given the impact of heavy rain,” Sealls said. “That makes it easier for me to talk about your town on TV too.”

CoCoRaHS stands for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, and the network is composed of volunteer weather watchers who take daily readings of precipitation and report them online.

The nonprofit network, which is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation, is also actively seeking volunteers.

“Everyone can participate, both young, old and in-between,” organizers said. “The only requirements are an enthusiasm for watching and reporting weather conditions and a desire to learn more about how weather can affect and impact our lives.”

Meteorologists like Sealls and a wide variety of other organizations and individuals use the data collected by network volunteers. Others who make use of the rainfall information include emergency managers, engineers, farmers, hydrologists, insurance adjusters, mosquito control workers, municipal utility supervisors, outdoorsmen, ranchers, students, teachers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Another side benefit of the network is that it’s educational. Not only will you probably learn more about the weather, but so will others, including any school-age children you have around the house. The network is also developing classroom resources for teachers, so it might be a good way for local educators to develop science coursework using local weather and rainfall totals.

The network, which includes the U.S. and Canada, is organized by state, and Conecuh County is in the network’s Southwestern Alabama region along with Baldwin, Butler, Choctaw, Clarke, Covington, Crenshaw, Escambia, Mobile, Monroe and Washington counties. Jack Cullen with the National Weather Service’s Mobile-Pensacola Weather Forecast Office in Mobile is the regional coordinator for our part of the state. John R. Christy, the Alabama State Climatologist and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, is Alabama’s CoCoRaHS state coordinator.

To participate in the network, you will have to have a high capacity, four-inch, all-weather rain guage that measures rainfall in hundredths of an inch. If you don’t already have a rain gauge of this type, you may be able to find one at a local home and garden store. If not, you can order one online from WeatherYourWay.com for about $25.

For more information about CoCoRaHS or to volunteer, visit the service’s official Web site at www.cocorahs.org. I signed up last Thursday, and it took all of about five minutes. Now, I’ve just got to get my hands on one of those wide-mouthed rain gauges.