Just released: November 2015 Condition Monitoring Newsletter

We hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving last week! This month's newsletter, which was released today, has a link in the introduction that you can use to see what previous Thanksgiving conditions looked like in your state.  The November newsletter focuses on citizen science, including an article about how Rebecca Cumbie-Ward at the State Climate Office of North Carolina uses condition monitoring reports and another piece on the White House Initiatives on citizen science and crowdsourcing. We also interview Pat Momich, who is our condition monitoring observer of the month, to hear what motivates her to be a CoCoRaHS observer and tips for successful monitoring.

Check out the newsletter here. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us at cisa@sc.edu.

Recap from October CoCoRaHS observer call

On October 29, 2015, we had a observer conference call with 7 CoCoRaHS condition monitoring volunteers, and detailed observer call notes can be found here. During the first part of the call, we discussed local impacts caused by heavy precipitation and flooding as well as non-weather sources, such as a local timber operation. Many of the observers shared that they do include impacts from heavy precipitation and flooding events in their reports, if observed. Some observers also had questions about how to report how logging operations and other human activities that alter local conditions. In response, CISA team members suggested to include this type of information in condition monitoring reports even though CoCoRaHS does not have a section to note human-caused land-use change, especially since this type of impact information would provide additional context to how weather conditions affects local areas.

During the second part of the conference call, CISA team member David Eckhardt asked observers for feedback on incorporating a scale bar into the CoCoRaHS reporting form. In addition to providing positive feedback about the prototype scale bar and guidance information that David created, observers also provided useful suggestions on how to improve the overall CoCoRaHS drought impact reporting form. For example, many observers agreed that having comment boxes next to each category would be useful in addition to the general comment box.

For those of you who were not able to make the call, but are interested in sharing your thoughts on a few proposed changes to the condition monitoring report form, please take a moment to complete this very brief survey to let us know what you think about the idea.

Additionally, anyone who is interested in participating in a usability study to test out the scale bar before it goes live, please enter your contact information in the space available on the survey OR e-mail cisa@sc.edu.