4.13

That's how many inches of rain we've had in the last 24 hours, and it's still raining!! We are an orange dot on the CoCoRAHS map (there's only one other color to go!). The weather man just said that the BIG rain will happen tomorrow afternoon...good grief, bigger than 4.13? Apparently so--he said 4-5 inches, some places will get MORE.

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If you don't belong to CoCoRAHS, I hope you consider joining. Very interesting, and perfect if you are a homeschooler.

CoCoRaHS

CoCoRaHS is the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network, mentioned on this blog before. This map of rain and snow reports is from yesterday. Each dot is a reporting station, like us. We are one of the orange dots in NW Alabama, registering 3.70-5.54 inches of precipitation yesterday (we had 3.90 inches of rain! And today we might have SNOW!!!).

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Here's how to join CoCoRaHS--really good for adding to a homeschool day!

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In January, Idaho will be added to the network--Dad, I think you'd find this stuff interesting. Right up there with your nature studies with the bird feeder and squirrel feeder.

Won't You Join Us?

John Christy holding the CoCoRaHS rain gauge.

Taken from TimesDaily.com:





As everybody knows, in Alabama, rainfall can vary greatly from mile to mile even block to block," said John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and state coordinator of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network.





"The more people we can have monitoring rainfall amounts, the better."





The number of volunteers in North Alabama:

• Lauderdale County 14 (I'm one of them!)


• Colbert County 5


• Franklin County 5


• Lawrence County 3


• Madison County 104

from me:
Cost: $22 for the rain gauge, and you need Internet access to report as often as you can (they know you will be gone sometimes, on vacation, etc). I've seen the weather-people on the local news use the CoCoRaHS daily totals on their broadcasts because the "official" gauges register a different amount.

3.53 Inches of Rain!

That's not all at once--that's since March 1st. Amazing--that's almost 3 months' worth in Boise. Can you believe we are still under the average for March?

CoCoRAHS is looking for more volunteers. The only cost is the rain gauge. Sign up here.

Moms and Dads--we made it through the night's storms just fine. They didn't start until after 6 am here and were well past Huntsville by 10 am. The storms dropped .76 inches of rain at our house in that little time! And our weather alert radio works just fine--it went off twice during the night (once for severe thunderstorm watch and once for severe thunderstorm). The only problem with it? Apparently I'm the only one in the house who can hear it! It's located in the entry area of the house, so it is central to everyone.

An Inch.

Not enough for JT to use his snowboard. Luci woke us up at 6:30--so much for John's plans of sleeping in on a Saturday! The kids spent a total of 15 minutes out there and had enough.

I measured the total snowfall--it sure looked like more than an inch on our tall grass. Enough to be pretty, and the most we've seen since 2000, I think. In my official rain gauge from CoCoRaHS, it came out to just 0.17" of precipitation. CoCoRaHS is looking to increase the number of Volunteer Observers in the states covered by CoCoRaHS. It's simple, and a good science project for the kids. Perfect for homeschoolers! Join here.

A nice thing: Luci remembered how to make snow angels!

Our neighbor's house is in the right background. They are the ones who built our house. View from the creek back up to our house. Our property ends way up there--this is mostly the neighbor's property. The neighbors are such nice people. JT and their son play together a lot. They graciously let us use land to play. It is beautiful out here. The creek is just far enough away and shallow enough ( 2-3 inches) that I don't worry too much about the kids. They stay away from the pond, mostly. (of course Luci isn't allowed outside without close supervision!)
Luci and JT

JT at the creek.

You can see a little bit of green in the creek. Things have started growing here already. Snow in March here is pretty rare.

The pond.

CoCoRaHS Weather Station

We are now officially part of the CoCoRaHS (pronounced Co-Co-raws) network. CoCoRaHS stands for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. Here's our rain guage. It comes from the CoCoRaHS office, on the website linked above. It has a central tube that measures only one inch of rain--you can see it measures in hundredths of an inch. If it happens to rain more than one inch in a 24-hour period (you record and empty the guage every day), the rain overflows into the big tube surrounding the 1-inch measuring tube. Very complete instructions for measuring the extra rain come with the rain guage. Also, if your area gets snow and hail, there are instructions for those weather conditions, too. Check out the map below to see if your state participates.

It's fun being a weather geek!