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this conference will now be recorded hello everyone and welcome to our educational webinar presentation today my name is Brad Mickelson I'm a meteorologist at the National Weather Service here in Glasgow Montana and I'll be your presenter today showing you what cooperative weather stations are all about this webinar was prepared by Rex Morgan who also works here at the National Weather Service office in Glasgow and we're gonna go ahead and tell you all these things about coop weather station then the co-op program for the national weather service questions like what are these weather stations where are they and what are they used for and how do I find the information online and what exactly do these co-op observers do so to understand the history of this all we have to go all the way back to the year 1890 and back then the US Congress passed the Organic Act and this tasked the weather bureau which is now known as the National Weather Service with producing forecasts and warnings and taking and recording weather observations and to assist in this effort the co-operative weather observer program was established so to understand how this works the different types of co-op stations need to be understood so there are three different types of co-op stations type a is called a climate station and what these do they provide daily climate data such as temperatures rain and snow amounts type B is called a hydrology station and what these do is they provide River and stream gauge readings and other information to help with hydrology forecasts in a type C off-station helps the weather service in general with forecast information to help us verify general forecasts and so as as time goes on and and we get more information from these stations that helps us build up this climate database and depending on the information that they help us with their climate or hydrology or forecast type these are the stations that they utilize and they help us collect that data for so exactly what do these co-op observers do most of them collect and measure and record 24-hour precipitation some daily maximum and minimum temperatures also the temperature at the time of the observation and what we do is we provide them with the equipment to do this work but the observers and the volunteers do all of those work themselves we give them the equipment and they they do that work and we really appreciate that effort that helps us very much in our efforts here as well some of these observers also in addition to those things we've mentioned they also measure snowfall or snow depth also snow water equivalent sometimes soil temperature or evaporation data so there's a lot of different things that they do some are a combination of these and some are are limited in scope and some are more general and more broad in scope and this information actually is relied on pretty heavily becomes pretty important when a court case or an insurance claim comes up and if there's been a big enough weather event or some kind of a major storm system the damages can be in the millions of dollars and the weather information that is provided by these co-op observers is relied on pretty heavily by these in companies and court cases and eventually after this data is is checked for accuracy these cooperative stations are considered the official weather data for these locations and so that can be that can be very important when it comes to these these insurance claims and court cases so we ask how many of these stations are there across the country way back when things got started the the initial vision was to have so many across the country that there'd be a pretty regular spacing of every you know 25 square miles but that became impossible due to cuts in budget funding so now what we have to settle for is is pretty much a less than complete coverage across the country but still quite a few about 8,500 stations across the country are helping us collect cooperative weather data and some of them are are type A or type B or type C as you can see there on the screen but some of them are a combination of these you know some of them collect climate data and weather data some of them collect forecast data and hydrology data some are a combination or all of these are just one of these so there are quite a few across the country even though we don't have as many as we would like we do have quite a few so then we ask or you might ask what kind of equipment is this what does it look like so the equipment that we use it has evolved over time as you can see there there's there's different kinds of things to use as we have learned and as we have evolved over time the design and maybe some mistakes for the way this equipment was was built or designed we've learned those mistakes over the years and have improved and made changes so that this equipment is state-of-the-art pretty top-notch stuff now learning along the way to help us to get this equipment doing a really good job of what it does so for example here's a piece of equipment this is called the mm TS and that stands for the maximum minimum temperature sensor so when we have this setup at somebody's location this sits at the top of a PVC post out in the open air and what it is is it's a temperature sensor there in that housing it keeps it out of direct sunlight but still allows air to flow freely through the sensor and it's connected by cable all the way indoors to another digital temperature readout box and so what the observer then does it has this location they're at that at their place out in the open air and then they have it connected by cable inside so they can read that information without having to go in and out all the time they just have it right there inside their house and is connected to a box called a Nimbus and that's what this looks like so this is a digital electronic storage box that keeps that information and what it does at that default display out in the front that shows the current temperature and what it does it can store in its memory up to about 35 days worth of temperature information maximum minimum and that is stored and then sent in to us at the weather service after the month is finished so the co-op observer can get a readout of what their Max and min temperatures have been over the last several weeks and and we get that information sent to us here at the Weather Service another piece of equipment we use here is called a wire weight gage and this is used primarily at bridges or road crossings when they went is down there underneath and as you can see here in the photographs there is a suspended weight that is connected by a wire which is spooled on to a spring-loaded a spring-loaded crank system there and the co-op observer that has access to that would use this to measure the level height of a stream or a river and so by carefully hand cranking this wire down and down and down until it just barely touches the top of the water there is a number readout at the top where they're standing where they can take the measurement and that is calibrated so it's accurate to about a tenth of a foot and then they take that River gauge reading and get that information to us so we have an idea of what the rivers are doing in the area another piece of equipment here is called the 8 inch standard rain gauge so this consists of a few different parts there's an 8 inch in diameter outer stainless steel cylinder and also inside we have a clear hard plastic cylinder with a funnel covering and connector that holds everything in place so for the winter season the the funnel connector and the inner clear tube the inner the inner clear connector that is removed for the winter season and for the warm season when we are just expecting rain then we would put that inner cylinder back inside with the funnel so this is the 8 inch standard rain gauge on many different coop observers have this on their location and this is what is used to officially measure precipitation for the National Weather Service another piece of equipment is called the evap pan which is obviously an abbreviation for evaporation pan what does is the measures how much evaporation is taking place for any given time at that location it's also accompanied by a gauge that measures the amount of total wind that has moved across a water surface and this becomes one of the factors in evaporation as well so that helps us get a feel for how much evaporation is taking place another piece of equipment is called the F P R D and that just is short for Fisher Porter replacement model d or sometimes even for more short we just call that Fisher Porter this is a Fisher Porter gauge and you see that picture there it does not require the daily attention that that your 8 inch standard rain gauge would this is is quite automated if the coop observer has this at their location it's pretty much just a set it and leave it situation this is automated by a it measures the precipitation by weight and it can store that information on a digital SD card for multiple weeks even even a month or so and at the end of that period of time the co-op observer would remove that SD card and replace it with another card that's empty and they would send the the SD card in to us at the weather service with that data in there and then we would take that and have that information and record it down for them in their system so this this measures precipitation no matter what it is if it's if it's snow or hail or sleet or rain it measures it by weight and a pretty good accurate measurement the way it's the way it's designed there so this is a Fisher Porter gauge another piece of information that's used a hydrology type this is just a simple river staff gauge and basically you can see it looks very much like a ruler out there and the idea is to position this on a solid stationary something that's out there in the river or very next to the river close to the river that is calibrated to the level of the water at the river that helps us get a feel for you know if the river is rising quickly or slowly it's positioned in a place so that it can be read from observer at a safe location like say on the riverbank or on a bridge and this river staff gauge is accurate to a tenth of a foot so with all this information and with all of this with all of this equipment you may be asking what happens to this information how does it get sent in the coop observer when they take this information down they would go to a website called weather coder it's it's right there at WX coder org and they would put their information in the system using their their username and it's specific to their site their specific location and whatever type of observe observation site they are whether they are you know type a climate or type B hydrology or type C forecast all of that information that they've collected they put in that website in a certain way and then it gets we have access to that at the weather service and so we would go in to what they report and we check it over for accuracy make sure it makes sense and and then after were through with it it gets sent on the National centers and then our folks on the national level they would double check it for accuracy and then it becomes official weather information after it's gone through those checks and so eventually the information that these co-op observers take and do becomes officials weather service information and what's very nice about that is over time that gets collected and builds up this large huge database of climate and temperature data and weather data for that site and the longer that database gets built up the more the more information we have and the easier and better we can tell what the climate is doing trends in precipitation trends in temperature and snowfall and how those things change over the years it's very helpful now if a co-op observer doesn't have access to that website they can still fill out that information in paper form on a form that we provide to them and then at the end of the month they would just send that paper form in to us at the Weather Service office and then we would put it for them into that weather coder website so either way the co-op observer doesn't necessarily need to have access to the Internet it's helpful it's nice but they don't have to they don't have to have that they can also just take observations by pen and paper that's also possible so they send it in to us we put it in and it becomes official weather service information for that site so if you need to know where this information is online cooperative observer information you can use these websites HTTP colon forward slash forward slash W to weather gov forward slash climate /xm ASIS and if you if you type in that web address it should get you to that area and then if you need to specifically hone down into a site if you just select Northeast Montana or the Glasgow Montana area it should start to get you in the right direction this information can also be found at the National climate and Center at NCDC gov those kinds of things are available on the national level as well and that's where that information is all right thank you for attending this webinar those are all the questions those are all the the the slides that we have for you today are there any questions out there does anybody have anything they'd like to add all right thank you for your attendance hope you enjoyed the presentation on our cooperative weather observers and the co-op program and the National Weather Service have a great day