Indiana saw a lot of precipitation the early part of this past week with rainfall totals ranging from 0.5” or greater in the northern and far southwestern counties to over 5” in south-central Indiana. In fact, an observer just south of Bedford, IN reported a combined total of 5.80”! Figure 1 shows the 2-day total amounts from volunteer CoCoRaHS observers – illustrating how valuable their contributions are to precipitation monitoring. CoCoRaHS – which stands for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow network – is a volunteer, citizen science program where anyone with interest in the weather and providing data to a larger community can sign up to take daily precipitation observations and report findings online or through a mobile map. Data is then collected nationally and made publicly available for the public to see and use. Programs such as the National Weather Service, state climatologists, emergency managers, and local communities[Read More…]