Signs of Spring

Stewart Futrell

Stewart Futrell

That’s right folks, despite the abnormally wet and cold winter we’ve experienced in the Carolinas, the signs of spring are all around us! Paying homage to the first day of spring, CoCoRaHS member Stewart Futrell shared these beautiful pictures of the blooming Daffodils and Saucer Magnolia (tulip tree) in his yard. As Stewart has captured here, the signs of spring foretell of the warming weather to come! These photos also are a great reminder to submit condition monitoring reports of your local area. Submitting regular reports of your area is a great way to monitoring local conditions under all types of weather scenarios. With the wet winter we’ve experienced here in the Carolinas, condition monitoring reports help us determine what conditions are like when we receive adequate precipitation, to compare against those periods when precipitation is not as plentiful.  As the flowers continue to bloom and the trees emerge from dormancy, keep those condition monitoring reports coming in. And don’t forget to take some time to enjoy the many signs of spring around us!

New CoCoRaHS condition monitoring recruits

We want to welcome North Carolina CoCoRaHS observers to the CISA and CoCoRaHS condition monitoring project! The volunteers are joining a great group of observers from South Carolina who have shown an amazing level of dedication to drought impacts research and we are truly grateful. We are excited about our growing community.

And speaking of a growing community...March 1st marked the beginning of the annual CoCoRaHS March Madness competition between states to see how many new observers we can recruit this month. If each existing volunteer could recruit just one person to become an observer, it would drastically increase coverage of CoCoRaHS stations throughout the U.S. leading to better localized precipitation data around the country.

We would like to encourage those involved in condition monitoring in the Carolinas to also mention their work with CISA to any new recruits. When you recruit a friend or family member to become a CoCoRaHS observer, talk to them about submitting condition monitoring reports as well as daily precipitation measurements. Please have any new recruits contact us with questions or if they would like to learn more about the CoCoRaHS condition monitoring project. More information about March Madness can be found here.