Need Some CoCoRaHS Holiday Gift Ideas?

Snow stick

The holiday season is upon us, and if your searching for gift ideas for the CoCoRaHS observer in your life (or something to put on your own list) here are some suggestions. Some of these are of more interest to those in CoCoRaHS, but others will appeal to any weather enthusiast.

Now that winter is here, any CoCoRaHS observer that has to deal with snow will appreciate an extra outer cylinder. When it's snowing they just have to swap out cylinders and bring in the full cylinder to melt the contents. No waiting for the snow to stop if it's snowing at observation time. Even those who never see a snowflake during the year will appreciate the convenience of an extra outer cylinder when it's raining at observation time.

Staying with the snow theme, an aluminum snow stick will make the job of measuring snow depth a little easier. The snow stick is a heavy duty 30-inch aluminum ruler that is graduated in tenths of an inch.

A fan of snow or hail will appreciate a CoCoRaHS precipitation series t-shirt. They feature the symbol for the precipitation, a description, and the CoCoRaHS logo. They are available in adult sizes from small to XXL.

CoCoRaHS t-shirt, caps, and sweatshirts are also available.  There is also an "observer" polo shirt with the CoCoRaHS logo with the word "Observer" underneath. It's available in royal blue only.

The gauge parts and accessories and CoCoRaHS clothing can be found at www.weatheryourway.com.





Fans of snow or photography will appreciate two books about snowflakes by Kenneth Libbrecht.  The Snowflake - Winter's Secret Beauty and The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album feature breathtaking microphotography of snowflakes. The first book describes the many different types of snowflakes and other information about snow. The second book is more of a chronicle of snowflake photography from 1890 to the innovations in digital photography.

I'm a big fan of non-fiction books about significant weather events. Here are a few of my favorites. If you have any books to add to this list please feel free to mention them in the comments.

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson.  This is the story of Isaac Cline, who was the chief meteorologist at the Galveston, TX office of the U.S. Weather Bureau during the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. This book tells the story of those who suffered through the Dust Bowl in the Great Plains. It was the inspiration behind Ken Burns' dopcumentary The Dust Bowl.

The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin. This is a story of a Plains blizzard on January 12, 1888 that left 500 people dead on the prairie, many of them children,

White Hurricane - A Great Lakes November Gale and America's Deadliest maritime Disaster by David G. Brown.  This book is an account of the fierce Great Lakes storm in November 1913.  Here's my post about this storm.

 The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Ingalls family deals with the brutal winter of 1880-1881 in the Dakota Territory.

Last but certainly not least, a great gift is a SAME encoded weather radio. Every home is required to have smoke detectors - every home should have a weather radio!  There are a number of models with a variety of features available.  You can learn more about NOAA Weather Radio and what's available in this post from last April.