The National Weather Service is Recruiting Rain, Hail, and Snow Observers

DULUTH, Minn — If you have ever been interested in observing and reporting on the weather here in the Northland, the National Weather Service is recruiting volunteers to help measure rain, hail, and snow. There is a network made up of thousands of individuals across the country who are trained to take weather measurements at their homes and report them. There is no educational background required to get started and it takes only a few minutes on days when we do get precipitation.

“It’s a completely grassroots volunteer run network of observations. Anyone of all ages and backgrounds can be involved and basically the primary goal is to use low-cost equipment with a lot of training and education to make sure everyone’s taking really good observations to get a really dense network of rain, hail, snow observations,” said National Weather Service Meteorologist Ketzel Levens.

The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, is free to sign up for.  Training is also free, but there is a standardized rain gauge that runs about 35 dollars.  For more information you can visit www.cocorahs.org.