Tale of Two Seasons

The western half of the country is really getting a taste of autumn. We awoke to frost here in the Denver area on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, the Great Lakes have been seeing strong to severe thunderstorms and feeling a bit more like late summer.

On Tuesday, severe storms moved through the Chicago area -- producing damage and power outages in Elgin.

Todays favorite comment off the CoCoRaHS comment report comes from the state of Illinois -- observer IL-CK-79. It simply says -- "we needed that!" The observer picked up a nice 0.51 inches of rain from the thunderstorms that moved through the Chicago area.

WOW -- talk about wet in the middle states on Tuesday. 77 CoCoRaHS observers from Oklahoma to Wisconsin picked up 1 inch of rain or more.

4 observers saw more than 2 inches of rain. Three in Missouri and 1 in Oklahoma.

We'd all like to have a day with 1 inch or more of rain so we can measure the precipitation that flows into the overflow can. That is always fun!

But even small amounts of rain, like 0.07 inches or 0.14 inches are extremely valuable. Heck, even 0.01 or 0.02 is helpful. Why?

Look for the answer in tomorrow's blog entry.