The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network, or CoCoRaHS, is a network of volunteer weather watchers who take daily readings of precipitation, and report them online or by phone.
History
The network was started in 1997, in Larimer County, Colorado after a flash flood in Spring Creek caused damage to structures in the city of Fort Collins, Colorado and killed five people. Year 1997 ( MCMXCVII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1997 Gregorian calendar Larimer County is the seventh most populous and the ninth most extensive of the 64 counties of the State of Colorado of the United States. A flash flood is a rapid flooding of geomorphic lowlying areas - washes rivers and streams Spring Creek is a tributary of the Cache La Poudre River in the state of Colorado in the United States. The City of Fort Collins, a Home Rule Municipality situated on the Cache la Poudre River along the Colorado Front Range, is the County seat [1] The severity of the flood surprised meteorologists, until then assistant state climatologist Nolan Doesken began collecting rainfall measurements from private citizens in the area. Meteorology (from Greek grc μετέωρος metéōros, "high in the sky" and grc -λογία -logia) is the Interdisciplinary Climatology (from Greek grc κλίμα klima, "region zone" and grc -λογία -logia) is the study of Climate, scientifically About 300 responded to his emergency request. Said Doesken later, "The results of the data showed that more than 14 in. (36 cm) of rain fell over southwest Fort Collins, the area where the flood waters originated, while less than 2 in. (5 cm) of rain fell only 3-4 mi (5-6 km) east. The enthusiastic interest shown by volunteers and the great value of the data verified the need for such a service, and CoCoRaHS was born. "[2]
Status
As of February 2008, twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia participate in CoCoRaHS, and nine more states are slated to begin participation in 2008. A US state is any one of the fifty subnational entities of the United States of America that share Sovereignty with the federal government Washington DC ( formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D [3]