link to CHILL<\/a>). \u00a0In an effort to help CoCoRaHS, one of their scientists, Dr. Rob Cifelli, helped draft a proposal to the National Science Foundation to expand CoCoRaHS from Colorado into portions of Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming. \u00a0Much to our surprise and amazement, the proposal was funded in 2003, providing support to hire a small staff — a project coordinator and a Web developer. Within a year, a new and greatly advanced website was up and running and volunteers were signing up in our neighboring states. \u00a0National Weather Service offices and State Climatologists from these adjacent states were immediately eager to get involved. \u00a0Nebraska took special ownership in the idea and invited Nolan Doesken to speak to the Nebraska Natural Resource Districts and provide detailed training in precipitation measurement procedures. \u00a0Soon after, the Nebraska Rainfall Analysis Information Network was launched \u2013 affectionately named NeRAIN (pronounced \u201cAny Rain\u201d). \u00a0The number of active volunteers quickly grew from a few hundred in 2003 to over 2,000 by the summer of 2004.<\/p>\nThe new website provided nearly instantaneous access to state and county maps of precipitation data allowing both participants and other internet users to view and access local precipitation data for every day of the year. \u00a0An impressive \u201cAdministrative\u201d portal helped volunteer leaders to efficiently assign station names and numbers to each new volunteer and also track and communicate with these participants.<\/p>\n
In 2004 a new CoCoRaHS national coordinator was hired. \u00a0That was Henry Reges, a meteorologist with the American Meteorological Society with a business management background, and with many professional connections. During the first month on the job, he began building a national vision for the project. This included the revised name \u201cCommunity Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow\u201d network and a sharp new logo. \u00a0Julian Turner, who served both as web developer and volunteer support leader refined the website and added creative artistic touches. \u00a0More training materials were also added making the website a hub both for volunteer data collectors but also for a growing number of users interested in precipitation.<\/p>\n
As CoCoRaHS matured into a professional-looking young organization, other states took interest and began asking to join. \u00a0New Mexico rolled out CoCoRaHS in 2005 with great success. At about this same time, Chad Gimmestad, a local meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder developed a capability for CoCoRaHS hail and heavy rain reports to be almost instantly communicated to National Weather Service office \u201cwork stations\u201d where they alarmed local forecasters. This new feature added a new operational value to the CoCoRaHS network \u2013 helping provide early documentation of severe and hazardous weather.<\/p>\n
Educational activities grew in importance. \u00a0Working with meteorologists from National Weather Service offices in Goodland, KS and Cheyenne, Wyoming, the CoCoRaHS team lead all-day workshops for teachers from rural schools, and conducted more field trips and learning opportunities for volunteers.<\/p>\n
In 2006, CoCoRaHS was the recipient of an important \u201cenvironmental literacy\u201d grant from NOAA\u2019s Office of Education. \u00a0This grant specifically funded expansion of the CoCoRaHS program nationally utilizing and leveraging partnerships with State Climatologists, National Weather Service offices, universities and other interested groups. \u00a0Using a thoughtful strategy of first building state-based local leadership teams, CoCoRaHS began a slow, but methodical expansion across the country from 2006 through 2009. \u00a0 \u00a0Newspaper articles, TV news features, e-mail listserves, word of mouth and National Weather Service website announcements helped spread the network to all fifty states and the District of Columbia. \u00a0The last state to join was Minnesota in 2009. \u00a0Not only were our observers learning about the environment and rainfall patterns, but they were providing the nation with a daily pool of valuable rainfall data. \u00a0By 2009, the number of active volunteers grew to over 12,000 making CoCoRaHS the largest source of daily rainfall measurements in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Special to KRTN Multi-Media The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) began on June 17, 1998. \u00a0With a few observers along Colorado’s Front Range, we had no idea that the network would become what it is today, with over 20,000 active observers in the United States, Canada, Puerto…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","entry","rows-excerpt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40331"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40334,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40331\/revisions\/40334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krtnradio.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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