We thank you for your interest in participating! However the precipitation monitoring program is closed at this time and all rain gauges have been deployed around the region. Many thanks to the Legacy Foundation of Tompkins County for funding this collaborative project between CSI and CoCoRaHS.
If you would like to monitor precipitation, you must contact BOTH Community Science Institute and CoCoRaHS.
Participating is as easy as:
- Learn about the program’s requirements on CoCoRaHS’ website and in their training slideshow.
- Complete the CoCoRaHS volunteer application.
Read on to learn about how this opportunity was made possible:
Thanks to a generous grant from the Legacy Foundation of Tompkins County, Community Science Institute is providing free rain gauges to volunteers in the Cayuga Lake watershed who are interested in participating in a nationwide precipitation monitoring program called CoCoRaHS. CoCoRaHS
In this program, volunteers install a standardized rain gauge at their home and check it each morning for precipitation. The photo on the left shows a typical CoCoRaHS rain gauge.
Volunteers then report the results on CoCoRaHS’s online database map (https://maps.cocorahs.org/). On this map, anyone can access precipitation data from across the country. If you zoom in on the map, like in the image on the right, you will notice that there are not a lot of folks monitoring precipitation in our watershed. There are significant gaps in Seneca County, Union Springs to Lansing, and the Enfield, Newfield, and Ithaca’s South Hill region.
Many of our volunteers have noted that rain varies a lot throughout the watershed. We may get a drizzle in Ithaca while folks in Interlaken are getting soaked and our friends in Aurora are enjoying the sunshine. Because the weather is so patchy, it can be difficult for CSI to:
Another benefit of this type of monitoring is that it provides an accessible way for volunteers who may be unable to participate in our other programs due to mobility, transportation, or time restrictions to get involved with water monitoring.
If you are interested in participating in precipitation monitoring with CoCoRaHS through CSI, please return to the top of the page and complete the three steps outlined!
