CoCoRaHS Affords Opportunity To Teach US Climate Like Never Before

It continues to be cool for much of the country with a few pockets of unsettled weather -- the cold is the main story, however, this weekend.

Let me take a minute here and get caught up on all your comments.

Fanghopper asked if the clippers have been more frequent than normal this year?

For those not in the Great Lakes, upper midwest or northeast -- clipper systems are weak cold fronts that move out of Canada and "clip" this region of the US.

They typically bring a reinforcing shot of cold air and squeeze out any available moisture in the form of a light, fluffy snow.

It does seem like there have been TONS of clippers this year but I just don't know enough about the climatology for your part of the country to know if this is above normal or not.

I'd venture to say it may be since the weather pattern this winter has been very persistent. (i.e. here in Denver we've been high and dry just about as long as you have been being hit with clipper after clipper)

John I sent a note up to CoCoRaHS central about your suggestion for expanding the training info.

I know there has been a lot of comments and debate over fog/freezing fog and if it is precipitation or not.

I misreported in a previous entry but for CoCoRaHS purposes, we ARE counting anything measured in your gauge from fog and freezing fog as precipitation. If possible, also make a comment about the fog just so users of the data know where the precipitation came from -- fog instead of passing showers for example.

I think now that CoCoRaHS is growing so large and is in so many states, with more than 5,000 pair of eyes making daily reports and comments each day about what is happening -- we are going to see more and more questions like this come up.

We are logging more data than any doppler radar scanning the skies could ever hope to record.

If you think about it, and if you look at a national plot of "first order" or "main" weather stations, talking about the main anchor locations for your state, there aren't that many for a country the size of the US.

It is a great representation BUT there are also many many gaps.

And when you add in all the secondary locations, such as on mountain passes or in smaller, remote towns -- which try to fill in these gaps -- there still aren't near as many as we would like to really study and learn the weather patterns of our country.

And here we have over 5,000 humans going out and making daily weather notes about the climate, observing things in some areas that quite possibly may have never been previously recorded -- certainly not to this extent.

I want to take this freezing fog issue for example -- it is not a new weather phenomena by any means.

But in the past, it was probably only observed at one or two locations during a widespread event across northeast Washington -- let's say both Spokane and Colville reported freezing fog and each station picked up 0.05" of moisture a day over a 5 day period -- they are 70 miles apart.

Big deal -- no one probably ever really thought that much about it before. It's fog and two places received a minimal amount of moisture. A total of a quarter-inch over a 5-day window.

Freezing fog is a very important issue for the transportation industry, but do we think of it as a valuable source of water?

Probably not.

Now with CoCoRaHS -- through the detailed reports filed by you the observer -- just pretend we saw a stagnant weather pattern set up with 5 days of freezing fog over a 100 square mile region of northeast Washington.

And pretend that in that 100 square mile region we have at least a dozen observers, but ideally many more.

When before, precipitation from fog in that same area was picked up only by just the 2 main reporting stations mentioned above, Spokane and Colville -- now we see at least a dozen reports over a several county area due to you.

It may spark all kinds of new studies and interest for someone like a graduate student to look at the question, can and does fog bring beneficial moisture to a region when it is widespread and persists over several days?

A quarter inch of moisture from a 5-day fog over a 100 square mile area would be HUGE if you look at it in terms of how many gallons of water it actually measured out to be!

Kind of a corney example and far-fetched possibly, but I did that intentionally just to show one of hundreds of examples of how 5,000 people taking simple precipitation data with a few comments makes a difference, and brings a meaning and a purpose you may not have thought about.

By the way, if that 100 square mile area did ever see a fairly uniform quarter-inch of moisture from freezing fog over a 5-day window, that would be equivalent to over 400 million gallons of water for the landscape to absorb.

A water company would LOVE to know that kind of data -- and I think it's pretty interesting to pretend that a prolonged fog event could deposit that much moisture if my pretend scenario actually did ever take place.

Here is a cool link that will help you see how I calculated the above water statistic.

My dream (and I am sure Nolan and Henry too) is to have enough money so we could support deeper employment with CoCoRaHS.

I'd love to sit down each day, read the comments and reports, and put together recaps, graphs, etc --- a climate "atlas" if you will -- of what we are seeing, observing, and learning about the climate of the United States.

Unfortunately I have too much debt like the rest of you and work 2 jobs to survive -- I do good to write this blog some days -- but I think one day we'll get there.

In the meantime, keep making your daily reports because every last bit of it is being archived and will be used down the road to learn more and more about the weather that impacts our daily lives.

And thank you for voting in the blog poll this week -- nearly 100 votes cast so far!!!

P.S. If there is something you are observing for your region that is of interest to you and you are one that would be inclined to study and analyze -- feel free to do so. I will be happy to help guide you as I am sure Nolan would be too.

It may be a section of your area that always seems to be wetter or drier. Maybe it's the precipitation from fog! Maybe something that needs a long period of data, perhaps up to 2 or 3 years?

The more we learn and document weather and weather patterns that become apparent thanks to CoCoRaHS and our growing network, the better we can demonstrate the value of our organization to potential sponsors.