 Hello everybody, this is Adnan Aqews. I am the North Dakota state climatologist and the state coordinator for the Kokoras. Kokoras stands for community, collaborative, rain, hail, and snow network. So with that I'm going to hit my next first slide shows what is Kokoras. It is a national non-profit community-based high-density precipitation network and also a citizen science network. So you can consider yourself as a citizen scientist. It is made up of volunteers from all ages and backgrounds just like you and I and students to retired. Also who take daily measurements of precipitation right in the backyards. And these are all the Kokoras stations in the nation. If you don't want to count and you got to take my word that the currently is of last week I when I downloaded this there were 70,788 stations which is the largest network in the United States. If you zoom into Kokoras in North Dakota there are 170 total stations there are current however they are not all reporting. Be joined the Kokoras network in 2009. Also the Kokoras run a fun competition called March Madness and usually happens in March along with the March Madness basketball tournaments and that's why the March Madness comes into the picture. Even though North Dakota is this advantage in March usually we have snow and we were able to attract enough number of people to win in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2018. This is based on the number of participants that we were able to recruit per capita. And also notice that 170 but not all reporting this is the reason why the majority of the observers are not reporting is the motivation of this workshop. And I assume that some of these people do not know how to report or do not know how to get access to the report that they do and and I assume that would cause low participation rate. So that is the motivation of this webinar. So the first slide is the understanding your task and it is very simple and you're supposed to report your precipitation reports daily. Even if it doesn't rain we would like to see zero rain or zero precipitation. Zero is actually data which is which is better than no data at all and we also would like you to report your observation closest to the time observation time as possible and zero precipitation is as important as any any type of precipitation. The some definitions of the precipitation and rainfall precipitation by definition definition is collective name for falling hydro meteors that include solid and liquid forms of water. So the water needs to be falling in order for it to be called precipitation. It could be rain, it could be snow, it could be hail and all that hydro meteors are called precipitation. And the difference between rain and the precipitation is rainfall is the liquid form of precipitation. So the next slide is the understanding the Kokora's website as you see over here the website for Kokoras is www.kokoras.org and you will get to the Kokora's website from there and it usually shows the the precipitation for that day and a week ago and when I download this map all these dots are representing a data and the zero precipitation is denoted by gray dots and blue dots and some darker blue dots and green dots and other green dots and indicating the the majority of the precipitation that is falling in the United States looks like it is concentrated and in the diagonal line from Kansas to Ohio and to the north and more precipitation is falling and in North Dakota nobody is reporting precipitation which is great and as I said zero data is better than no data at all. And your first task is to click on the my data entry if you are not logged in yet and that's going to ask you to log in if you click on that button it is going to take you to log in page and this is where you log in your username right here in the password and make sure you click on the save login information and then next task is to click on the login and when you do that it is going to take you to your page where you need to enter data notice that this change into my data and you are reporting daily precipitation by default it is going to bring this page so what I would do if I were you after you log in I would just bookmark this page so next time when you go back to the Kokora's page this page will show up and all you need to do is just enter your data and here is the the date by default it is today's date I downloaded this on the May 7 that's why it says May 7 and make sure your observation time is the default time that you assigned when you signed in and I signed it at 7 a.m. and usually most Kokora's observers are reporting at 7 a.m. in the morning that says early enough for folks to get up and do the observations so that they can do their business by 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock and whenever it is and it is usually late enough for most precipitation that falls in the evening hours probably ended so you adjust you're able to adjust your date in here you if you're reporting for the previous day click down and you're able to adjust your time in here and you put down your precipitation to the nearest 100th of an inch such as 0.01 or 0.02 whatever that is and then you put down your observation notes in here if you would like to mention drought conditions for example you do it here if you would like to mention how cloudy it is and how cold it is and and this is your chance to be able to write it down here and next is monthly zeros monthly zeros is a cool way of looking at your precipitation data in a month it is a excellent way to catch if you missed a day for example it looks like I missed on Tuesday the May 23rd I purpose to miss this so that I can I can take a screenshot this is also where you can easily put if you have a zero precipitation in the past all you need to do is just click on that and make sure you have the monthly zeros in here and make sure you are in the my data entry and when you do that you click on it and it'll do that and make sure you submit and it will submit the day another feature is the multi-day accumulation and again you are in my data and you clicked on the multi-day accumulation and this would be a handy form if in case you are going to be gone for a vacation for example if you couldn't assign somebody to take the data or record it for you it is possible that you come back from the vacation and then read your gauge and enter as one lump sum data to do that and make sure you click on the right beginning date this is usually the the last the day after your last day of your report this is the first day of accumulation period and this is when you empty the rain gauge you come back from your vacation you read the precipitation or rainfall in your gauge and this is the day and the hour and the next one is the hour of the the rain gauge it was emptied and then and then next you just put that data in here and if you want to have a note in here then you might want to say you were gone for 20 days and and perhaps you don't trust your data or it you might want to say that the data is contaminated I see a lot of bird poop in the gauge and something like that anything that you would like to wish to the right goes into your notes and then of course the next is don't forget to submit your data in here so that is another way to submit this one is going to show you how to read your precipitation you probably have your the gauge outside I hope you you mounted on a post and it shows this one is four by four it doesn't have to be for example my gauge in my yard is posted on a two by four you usually put it higher than the post itself to eliminate that the splash in usually rain falls into the other wood and it would splash in if the the gauge is aligned with this so you want to eliminate it by putting your the gauge up your gauge is made up of your funnel your overflow tube and the the measuring tube the rain falls inside and that tube is about 10 inch long but the scale is exaggerated so that the rain the filling the entire measuring tube is worth one inches one just one inch if the the rain is inside your gauge the way that you read is usually when the rain falls the gravity is going to pull that the water down but at the same time the the surface tension in each side of the the measuring tube is going to make that the bulge or the curved surface called meniscus so the way to read is you read at the bottom of the meniscus for example this gauge is shoving a little less than 0.4 inches of rain if that was I would have to guess is right there it would be 0.37 or 38 or 39 and however you interpret that and and all these tick marks are graduated by 0.01 in each of these tick marks are 0.01 inch and you're supposed to read it to the nearest one hundredth of an inch for example 0.01 or 0.23 on in this case this is 0.37 or 38 and once you read it and make sure you do write it down so you don't forget it or just keep it in mind someplace in your mind when you go back to your computer you're gonna need that number you empty the gauge or or measuring tube and replace it inside your overflow tube and then make sure you put your funnel down and you're ready for the next day it's usually doesn't happen in North Dakota but it is possible that sometimes more than one inch rainfall so in in that case the water is going to overflow into the the outside tube or what we call overflow tube and make sure you read then first one inches in the measuring tube and empty that and then and put that or the water that was overflow into the overflowing tube inside the measuring tube and add that amount to that one inch if it is more than two then repeat the process usually as I said it doesn't happen especially this time of the year perhaps in the summertime with the heavy thunderstorm you might have to do that and the next is looking at your data so now that you report it and you want to look at your data as well as look at your data that's your neighbor reported you the first thing the one way to do that is to click on the map on the Kokora's page and then make sure that you click on the state that you're in North Dakota you click on that map right there and then a bigger map will appear focusing in North Dakota and I did this in May 7th and at the time nobody was reporting any precipitation which is great because I am looking at all that no precipitation it is ensuring that that day no precipitation fell in these stations and you can you can move your cursor over individual circles and and in that case and the circle is not colored so it is indicating zero precipitation I can move my the cursor over this particular station happens to be my station CS is standing your county abbreviation Cass County North Dakota station number one is reporting zero no snow no snow or if I want to I can click on the go to report details and look at the report in detail which will show everything including notes and you can do this in your station or any other station in your neighborhood to see how your data compared to the other stations in your neighborhood so this is one way to look at your data and another way to look at your data is in table format make sure you click on the view data and on the left hand side make sure you click on the daily precipitation and then it will bring up a table this table is the precipitation data that is reported up to this time in your entire state um and here are the station numbers and and these stands for North Dakota MR is the abbreviation for your county um botanical County Bowman County for example as Cass County Dickie County and all these abbreviations are and the cool thing about this is you can sort them by the column headers and if I wanted to sort for the highest precipitation the lowest precipitation I click on this column so it will automatically sort uh the stations that are reporting from the highest amount to lowest amount if I click it again it will resort it for the lowest amount to highest amount and I can do this for any um of these uh the column headers if you're only interested in your current your county for example you can you can sort for the county and and sorts for the uh the letter a to z or if you click it again if you it'll sort it backward uh this this is one way to look at it and if you wanted to go back to the map again you can you can look you can click on one of these either classic map shows dots or a new map that we saw earlier and and you can do some additional data um and for example the conditional monitoring to help us with the drought assessment and this is very new and I encourage all the Kukura's observers to do that and for example when we had gone through a very uh devastating drought of 2017 2018 we were relying on county agents input uh that we created with the google form however Kukura's observers can do that too and all you need to do is just click on my data here and make sure you click on the condition monitoring on the left hand side which will bring this form and um you can you can click on these drought conditions if it is near normal is just click on here and then add some text in here in the notes and you might want to say for example conditions are near normal or if it is uh mildly dry uh you might want to click on that but make sure that you you say something about it in here if it is a general awareness or a municipal um maybe you might want to say um uh it has a mean raining for 20 days and the the grass is looking dry um if it is moderately dry for example if it is severely dry and if you're not really familiar with the uh the scale you might want to click on more information on the scale bar and it will tell you what mildly dry means and mildly uh moderately dry means or severely dry means so you can you can look at the conditions in your area and then say something about it uh a drought monitor comes up once uh a week and i am going to show you next what the drought monitor is and it is a drought monitor really determines how much incentives the farmers in your area should get um imagine that you clicked submit and it will bring up uh a map and this is one way to look at your um drought information that the Kokoras observers put together for example this one is uh as of now i download this map just this morning um and and the website for this is uh at the kokoras.org if you forward slash and say maps make sure the m is capitalized another forward slash condition monitoring it will bring you to this map and this map will show the current drought conditions this yellow area is indicating abnormally dry areas it looks like one observers did say something and if you wanted to read that move your cursor over and make sure you click on that and it will bring this um pop up window and and this report is coming from minots uh indicating the the county and the the station number and this person said very dry but humid in minot today which is a great information uh and sometimes when the drought conditions get worse we are really monitoring as well as the drought monitor author is monitoring this these uh input um this is very light uh drought conditions but uh if you wanted to look at the entire united states uh this is where you look at it uh the very same map in North Dakota and looking at these uh the color coordination is indicating uh for example this is indicating uh severe drought and moderate lights uh some of these are if it is uh this color it is uh serious conditions are happening and and some of these reports are here and and and other thing about this is it has a slider right here you can slide this to the left it it'll take you to the time in the past for example if i wanted to slide it all the way to where the uh the drought conditions were really worse in North Dakota and and i came right here uh it is the week of seven four 2017 to seven ten 2017 this is a one week snapshot of united states and as you see all these are dark colors indicating severe drought especially in this area it is the exceptional drought exceptional drought is incepted in North Dakota just twice in record once in 2006 and and another time in 2017 if you wanted to read uh you move your cursor over one of these uh uh severe droughts uh reported looks like one person reported in here and if you click on that and you would be reading for example this particular one is coming from hazen the reporter said we are in severe drought the june hay cutting was very disappointing on a hay field where the average yearly yields a 60 plus large round bales we got six bales only yes six the observer says the wheat is areas isn't even knee high and it is heading out the sunflower field next to the house isn't much better we are now experiencing hot temperatures ranging from 102 now down to the 80s so the temperature is important too because it is going to tell us even if there's a precipitation higher the temperature more evaporation so you're going to lose that precipitation too so i am reading that report as well as the drought monitor author is reading this report that helps us justify the drought conditions in the field so i strongly urge you to utilize that opportunity what i would say for the North Dakota farmers and even if you're in the municipal areas North Dakota citizens so that's all i have this is my information what i'm going to do is i'm going to ask you to unmute yourself so to see if you have any questions about the i'm going to bring that back up if you have any question i will go back to the slide that you saw before or i will just be able to answer any questions and make sure that you unmute yourself before you start speaking adnan i had a question about is this information given to the rainfall index of the of the crop insurance program um they they look at that information and obviously kokoroz data goes into uh one of their database is an input so they are they are watching and monitoring the kokoroz data okay i i kind of assumed that but i just didn't know for sure it is just one of the inputs it is not the solely uh data that they look at they look at the uh satellite reports uh and they look at the co-op uh network cooperative precipitation network from the national weather service and obviously kokoroz is one of them as well okay i didn't realize that it was important every day to report even if there's no precipitation to put in the zero i didn't realize that that was quite important yeah it helps us separate um no data to zero data and sometimes the reporters do not bother reporting zero but uh i want everyone to know that it is very important especially during the drought to justify that or verify that zero precipitation otherwise we wouldn't know uh if it didn't rain or the reporter just didn't bother or report it because i've been neglecting to do that so that will change i will start reporting every day there's an easy way that you learn uh in the previous report that would be very easy for you to go to uh this slide and which shows you monthly zeros and if you're sure that all the data that you did not report is zero you can just start clicking on these uh on these uh check marks or or in these boxes and then make sure you submit and it'll submit all at once okay so that would be at the end of the month you mean then or no you can do it the next day or you can do it on the same day okay so this will bypass this will bypass this this form so you don't have to put your cursor in here and and say zero and then put down zero snowfall and hit submit instead of doing that make sure you click on the monthly zeros on the left hand side and bring this uh a calendar looking data entry form and you will see a whole bunch of check marks over here that you can check or the boxes unchecked but only uh i want to make sure that you are sure that that day it didn't rain yes and if you're sure that you can start clicking up and and go back all the way to october because you're uh the water year started from october your next report is going to come as a percent participation report um is going to start from october so make sure you go all the way back to october and start filling in that um filling in that zero precipitation okay any other questions could you review uh if we've been gone on vacation for five days or something yeah absolutely review that again i there was i thought i had a question there it was very very good the way you did it but could you go over that yeah no problem uh if you're if you're looking at the multi-day accumulation make sure you click on the uh the my data uh on the top and make sure you click on the multi-day accumulation on the left hand side okay let me run this um and the next you're gonna pick a date the starting date that is usually the day after uh your last report or the day that you go to your vacation yeah and this is the date that emptied your data for example you came from your vacation at 2 p.m um today and then make sure that you select your uh today's date the five uh what is today uh um 13 13 and then you change your time from 7 a.m to 2 p.m okay um and then make sure you put down that multi-day accumulation here and then hit submit okay that's what i've been doing wrong i haven't been going to that bottom box that multi-day precipitation on the bottom i've been doing that i haven't been doing that right uh what about if uh suppose that your normal reporting time at six in the morning for us we're on mountain time yep and suppose it's um it's still drizzling it's still obviously continuing to rain um and it quits at 11 o'clock let's say then you would just plug in 11 as opposed to six o'clock and then put your amount in no you don't have to do that um if if you still would like to report on your schedule time which i would do uh you would go back to the gauge um if it is 6 a.m uh you read the gauge um you're gonna have to do this pretty fast because you don't want to miss uh additional rainfall or drizzle in the meantime it it only takes um five seconds anyway so the the amount that you're gonna lose is going to be negligible so you read it and make sure you remember that number and put back your gauge immediately and the new rainfall is going to go to your next day's report but you make sure the report whatever you read for the current day okay so when we see it um and also you might want to this is where you might want to mention uh that rain is still continuing um as of the observation time so that's where we know that uh the the previous day's rain and the next day's rains are continuous okay good good so this way you can separate your periods from previous day to the next day okay okay that answers the question any other questions from the others it looks like we have one two three four five guests in case you're speaking uh you're muted that's why i don't hear you otherwise i'm gonna assume there are no other questions if that is the case i am going to stop recording