Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The 11th meeting of the WERA 1012 Committee convened at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, CO by Co‐Chairs Steve Hilberg and Chris Daly. This year’s meeting was organized around four main sessions: WERA Partners, Instrumentation and Protocols, Data, Data, and More Data, and CoCoRaHS Support and Operations.

The meeting began with a short welcome presentation by Michael Harrington, WERA 1012 Advisor from Colorado State University. He stated that the WERA 1012 Committee is up for renewal and he will be working with Nolan and Henry to get that done. He also reviewed NIFA and AFRI activities and funding, as well as implications of the new Farm Bill.

Russ Schumacher, the new Colorado State Climatologist talked about his background and perspective coming to the Colorado Climate Center and to CoCoRaHS.

WERA Partners

Molly Woloszyn, the Regional Drought Drought Information Coordinator, NOAA/National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) talked about how CoCoRaHS data are integrated into NIDIS activities across the country. CoCoRaHS is specifically mentioned in the 2016 NIDIS Implementation Plan. The 2016‐2020 NIDIS priorities focus on filling the gaps and increasing the compatibility of data sources. The NIDIS Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) are using citizen science to improve drought early warning through recruiting and training of new observers, especially in data‐sparse regions, and strengthening existing citizen‐science networks. CoCoRaHS Condition Monitoring Reports (piloted by Coastal Carolina DEWS) and E‐T and water balance maps (Midwest DEWS) are also being integrated.

Chris Daly with the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University described some of the data issues they are trying to resolve. Varying observation times produce spatial discontinuities in the PRIMS data. PRISM day is 12UTC +/‐ 4 hrs., and they are currently testing a procedure to deal with shifting time of observations. PRISM is also a real stickler on data completeness, and if there are more than two days missing in a month data for that station is not used in the PRISM analysis.

Rick Fleetwood with Environment Canada (EC) and CoCoRaHS Canada spoke about CoCoRaHS Canada activities. They are pursuing expansion in all provinces now that the French version of the web site is now available. EC staff are using data in near‐real time to monitor drought, adjust flow records in winter river flows. EC staff is using CoCoRaHS data to supplement other networks with rain and snowfall and to aid in data QC and forecast verification. CoCoRaHS Canada is working to expand the evapotranspiration network (E‐T)  and are promoting Condition Monitoring reports.

Jim Zdrojewski with the Climate Services Branch, National Weather Service provided a climate services update. Climate folds into all areas of the Weather Ready Nation (WRN) goals of the

NWS. He reported that hiring at NWS is much improved and streamlined. Positions are being filled at the field level. Most of the Program Manager positions are currently vacant, and they are processing applications for those now to fill them all. NWS forecast offices are shifting to automatic launch of weather balloons. They are training everyone to do every job in the forecast and operations side.

Tom Trunk Office of Observations, Programs Management Branch, National Weather Service gave a remote presentation on the history and background of the U.S.

Cooperative Network. He also reported that the NWS hopes to have hundreds of wireless MMTS sensors produced next year. They will be solar powered and will also have a Yagi (directional) antenna to transmit the signal to the base station. There are four test sites currently in operation.

Instrumentation and Protocols

Lucy Plahmer with WeatherYourWay.com, the major outlet for the 4‐inch rain gauge used by CoCoRaHS, described how her company got started and plans for the future. Ninety percent of her sales are for rain gauges and rain gauge parts, and she sells about 300‐400 gauges a month. Changes in the weather and seasons are reflected in rain gauge sales. Productive Alternatives, the wholesale supplier of the rain gauges informed her the price of the gauge will be going up and the shipping costs will also increase. There was some discussion of looking for an alternative to Productive Alternatives for the gauges. Right now they are the only game in town. Lucy indicated she will be updating her web site this year and hopes to have a smart phone app available as well.

Mike Crimmins, Associate Professor & Extension Specialist ‐ Climate Science, Department of Soil, Water, & Environmental Science, the University of Arizona gave a remote presentation about precipitation monitoring in remote ranches and rangeland for drought planning. They designed an “accumulation gauge” to collect rainfall in an area where gauges may not be checked frequently. Ranchers collect additional supporting information such as photos and notes when they visit these gauges. Future plans include availability of public maps and a historical climate data explorer.

There were discussions about the CoCoRaHS extreme rainfall protocol (i.e. what to do when the rain gauge overflows), changes in hailpad distribution (there is a waning interest in hailpads), the CoCoRaHS soil moisture measurements, and a new effort to develop a method and protocol to measure ice accretion.

Chris Daly concluded this session with a case study of rain gauge tampering in eastern Colorado and western Kansas in an attempt to compromise the Risk Management Agency’s rain          index for the area to obtain insurance payouts. CoCoRaHS observations were important to the PRISM analysis, along with data from other networks.

Data, Data, and More Data

Amanda Farris , Program Manager for the Carolinas Integrated Sciences & Assessments discussed the status of the Condition Monitoring program, which they piloted. The program was launched nationally in October 2016 and 3213 observers are participating, and we need to continue to reach out to observers to encourage them to participate. The Condition Monitoring Reports are used regularly in drought monitoring, and area also used by the NWS for fire weather forecasts, winter weather, and frost/freeze information.

Nolan Doesken reviewed the expansion of the many applications and uses of CoCoRaHS data since the network began. He pointed out that we need to emphasize the local impacts of observing rather than the national aspects.

Steve Hilberg described and demonstrated the E‐T and water balance maps ow produced by the Midwestern Regional Climate Center for the Midwest DEWS. This is the only spatial depiction of these parameters currently available.

Dani Talmadge and Steve Hilberg updated everyone on the status of CoCoRaHS quality control and quality assurance. There are roughly 5500 QC tickets generated per year, with most errors occurring in winter with the addition of snow measurements.

CoCoRaHS Support and Operations

Nolan Doesken reported that CoCoRaHS is going strong. We have gone several years without any of the federal grants that helped us to get to the national and international scale. Both the Canada and Bahamas are strong. Rural recruiting continues to be a challenge, especially in the Midwest and Great Plains.

Henry Reges reported on activities with respect to state and regional coordinator support. He has visited over 50 NWS offices and the Bahamas. He gives a motivational talk on these visits to encourage more involvement. If the MIC, SOO, and WCM in the NWS offices are on board the office does well supporting CoCoRaHS. He hopes to have the development of the state and regional coordinator support page completed this summer.

Matt Spies, Connecticut State Coordinator reported on recruiting and retention. The number of daily reports per day were higher in 2017 than in 2016 especially in the warm season, and we are on about the same track for 2018. There were about 4 million reports in 2017, about three percent higher than in 2016. However, there has been a general decline in gains over the past several years. We generally need two new observers to keep one reporting in the long term.

Julian Turner from CoCoRaHS headquarters provided an update on the status of IT. There are a number of overarching issues to deal with. Ideally, additional personnel resources are needed to work on the operational website and database, web development, app development, and system administration. Internet security has become a major issue to deal with on a daily basis.

Microsoft recognizes CoCoRaHS as a non‐profit, and that allows CoCoRaHS to use Office 365 for free. It is multi‐functional and will allow us to be more flexible and collaborative (dedicated email, form generation, Skype for Business, file storage and sharing, etc.). The CoCoRaHS staff and a few state coordinators are testing this out now. Julian continues to work on the CartoDB mapping system which will expand the capability of users to visualize data.

Nolan Doesken outline the five proposed objectives for the 2019‐2024 WERA 1012 renewal.

• Promote volunteer precip obs as a cost‐effective approach to monitoring a highly variable and critically important part of our climate

• Increase the quantity and representativeness while improving the quality and usefulness of data
• Increase and improve communication, connectedness, and sense of purpose among and across the community of
• Explore and promote research utilizing precip data from volunteers and volunteer networks
• Establish new and strengthen existing partnerships to provide financial assets, human resources, and the intellectual capital needed to sustain these volunteer networks for years to come

Some proposed activities to support these activities area:

• Leverage partnerships to show the effectiveness of the citizen science network for

• Utilize the Spatial Proximity Factor (SPF) implementation, rural recruiting
  • Provide tools to coordinators to more effectively communicate with observers (notification system, newsletter techniques
• Advertise the use of the data by the NOAA and other national agencies to generate maps and do research on
• Show the economic benefit of CoCoRaHS to various sectors, insurance, agriculture, transportation, hydrology, hazard mitigation, etc

Henry Reges outlined the financial status of CoCoRaHS for the past 12 months. Expenses were

$415K, with 354$K in direct expenditures and $61K in indirect costs (overhead). Income includes a grant from PRISM, the Year‐End fundraiser, the National Mesonet, local Colorado user        fees, and gifts. In June there will be a 7‐day fundraiser and CoCoRaHS water bottles will be given away for donations $60 and higher. They will be looking at other sources of revenue including data users outside of Colorado, foundations, private corporations, etc.

Election of the 2019 officers was held. We will try a new model, pairing a previous chair with a new chair for continuity and experiences. Mary Knapp/Steve Hilberg President for 2019; Russ Schumacher/Nancy Selover for 2020. Approved by the committee by voice vote.

The last session of the annual meeting was a discussion and brainstorming about communicating about WERA 1012 to coordinators and partners on a regular basis, encouragement to contribute and attend, how to best maintain continuity from year to year, assembling a to‐do list of action items that can be addressed by the committee and perhaps completed in the coming year. This led to a long discussion about the value of newsletters and communicating to our observers.

The group discussed how to better communicate the existence and activities of this committee to all of our coordinators to generate interest. Henry proposed there be a liaison between the committee and coordinators. Steve will develop an executive summary of the meeting that can be sent to coordinators, and Steve and Nolan will work on a regular series of articles/email that can be posseted to the coordinator group between now and the next meeting to keep the committee’s activities visible to coordinators. Steve will prepare a list of tasks/decisions from this meeting and distribute it to the committee.

Henry Reges, CoCoRaHS National Coordinator, visited 29 National Weather Service offices this year to promote CoCoRaHS and to connect with the many NWS staff who serve as volunteer state and regional coordinators for CoCoRaHS. The following is a list of presentations made during the report period.

International ‐‐ National Conferences and Venues

Oral Presentation       AMS 23rd Conference on Applied Climatology, Asheville, NC, June 2017 Oral Presentation  

American Association of State Climatologists Annual Meeting Asheville, NC, June 2017

Participant        Commission of Basic Systems (CBS) Committee Meeting, Geneva, Switzerland, September 2017

Oral Presentation       WMO Workshop on Information Management, Geneva, Switzerland, October 2017

State/Regional/Local   Presentations‐Exhibits‐Gatherings

• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Salt Lake City, UT NWS Western Regional Headquarter ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Salt Lake City, UT Utah State Climate Office – visit – Logan, UT
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Pocatello, ID National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Boise, ID
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Morristown, TN
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Greenville, SC National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Peachtree City, G 
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Billings, MT National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Glasgow, MT National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Bismarck, ND North Dakota State Climate Office – visit – Fargo, ND
• Environment Canada Regional Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Winnipeg, MB, Canada Manitoba Hydrologic Forecasting and Water Management ‐ visit – Winnipeg, MB, Canada National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Grand Forks, ND    Productive Alternatives (Rain Gauge Manufacturer) ‐ visit – Fergus Falls, MN
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Pittsburgh, PA National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Cleveland, OH National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Buffalo, NY
• Weather Innovations (CoCoRaHS Canada Headquarters) – visit – Chatfield, ON, Canada National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Syracuse (South Bend), IN Ohio State Climate Office – CoCoRaHS presentation – Columbus, OH
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Cincinnati, OH National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Indianapolis, IN Midwest Regional Climate Center – visit – Champaign, IL
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – St. Louis, MO National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Lincoln, IL National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Paducah, KY Missouri State Climate Office – visit – Columbia, MO
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Louisville, KY 
• WMO sponsored CoCoRaHS Bahamas Sustainability Trip – Freeport, Nassau, Abaco Island, San Salvador Island, Bahamas 
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Las Vegas, NV National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Flagstaff, AZ National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Tucson, AZ National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Phoenix, AZ
• National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Key West, FL National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Miami, FL National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Tallahassee, FL National Weather Service Office ‐ CoCoRaHS presentation – Mobile, AL 
• Noah Newman, CoCoRaHS Education Coordinator, presented CoCoRaHS materials at 26 different events including school visits, teacher workshops, training sessions and promotional events, reaching over 800 people (and separately 15,000 attendees of the STEM Day at the Colorado Rockies Coors Field).
• The Midwest Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) worked with the Midwestern Regional Climate Center to produce maps of CoCoRaHS measured evapotranspiration and water balance. These maps are available on the MRCC web site (https://mrcc.illinois.edu/cliwatch/drought/drought.jsp#evap)
• Modifications were made to the data display on the CoCoRaHS web site to display complete snowfall and water equivalent data has improved winter‐time quality control. 
• Modifications were made to the CoCoRaHS QC Ticketing database so that now all state coordinators and regional coordinators automatically receive email notification of tickets issued for CoCoRaHS observations in their respective areas. During the past year 5930 QC tickets were submitted.

Lackstrom, K., A. Farris, D. Eckhardt, N. Doesken, H. Reges, J. Turner, K. Smith, and R. Ward, 2017: CoCoRaHS Observers Contribute to ʺCondition Monitoringʺ in the Carolinas: A New Initiative Addresses Needs for Drought Impacts Information. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. doi:10.1175/BAMS‐D‐16‐0306.1, (published in BAMS, December 2017)

Reges, Henry W, CoCoRaHS/Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO; and J. Turner. 2017: “Guidance for Managing Crowdsourced Data”. WMO Workshop on Information Management (WWIM), Geneva, Switzerland, October 2017.

2017. Andrew Sheppard, Julian Turner, Jacob Thebault‐Spieker, Haiyi Zhu, and Loren 2017. Never Too Old, Cold or Dry to Watch the Sky: A Survival Analysis of Citizen Science Volunteerism. Proc. ACM Hum.‐ Comput. Interact. 1, CSCW, Article 94 (November 2017), 21 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3134729

Appels, Willemijn M., Bradford, Lori, Chun, Kwok P., Coles, Anna E., and Graham Strickert, 2017: DIY Meteorology - Use of Citizen Science to Monitor Snow Dynamics in a Data-Sparse City. Facets, published online 26 Sept, 2017.

Mattingly, K.S., Lynne Seymour and Paul W. Miller, 2017. Estimates of Extreme Precipitation Frequency Derived from Spatially Dense Rain Gauge Observations: A Case Study of Two Urban Areas in the Colorado Front Range Region. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Vol. 107, Iss. 6, 2017.

Suriano Z.J., Leathers D.J., 2017. Synoptically classified lake-effect snowfall trends to the lee of Lakes Erie and Ontario. Clim Res 74:1-13. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01480.

Cocks, S.B., J. Zhang, S.M. Martinaitis, Y. Qi, B. Kaney, and K. Howard, 2017: MRMS QPE Performance East of the Rockies during the 2014 Warm Season. J. Hydrometeor., 18, 761–775, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-16-0179.1

Curtis, M. B., 2017: A synoptic and mesoscale analysis of heavy rainfall at Portland, ME 13-14 August 2014. J. Operational Meteor., 5 (7), 78-86, doi: https://doi.org/10.15191/nwajom.2017.0507.