Get Involved!

On this last day of Severe Weather Preparedness Week in North Carolina. I wanted to invite you all with ways you can get involved to help with Severe Weather.

There are several ways you can do that. I wanted to list a few in this blog and let you decide if you have an interest in any of them.

Become a Trained Weather Spotter.

The National Weather Service has many valuable tools that can help not only to predict weather but issue warnings in a timely manner. However, most of these warnings come from information provided by trained spotters out in the field. For more information on how you can become a SkyWarn Spotter visit https://www.meted.ucar.edu/training_course.php?id=23

Another great way to help provide reports is through CoCoRaHS

• WHAT IS COCORAHS?

CoCoRaHS is an acronym that stands for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow network. CoCoRaHS is a non-profit, community-based network of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds working together to measure and report precipitation data. The program started in Colorado in 1998 and is now active in almost all 50 states across the country. Data collected through CoCoRaHS helps meteorologists, researchers, media outlets, and others observe and study the variability of precipitation across the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia. The accumulated precipitation data is available to anyone through the internet.

There are over 350 CoCoRaHS observers in the Greenville-Spartanburg, SC (GSP) county warning area. The map below shows the locations of these observers across Western North Carolina, Upstate South Carolina, and Northeast Georgia. 

For more information please visit http://www.weather.gov/gsp/cocorahs

mPing

ARE RAINDROPS FALLING ON YOUR HEAD? Are you getting hassled by hail? Is snow glistening in your treetops? We need your weather reports for our research!

The mPing project is a great way to report the type of precipitation you are getting where you are.

You can download the app for your mobile device in the Apple App Store https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mping/id584383400?mt=8 or get it on Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.ou.cimms.mping

These are great ways you can get involved not only to help yourself and loved ones when severe weather threatens but also keep you community and communities downstream from you aware and prepared. 

As always thank you for following Rowan County Weather!