If you've checked the National Weather Service for your local weather, chances are a volunteer recorded the highs, lows and precipitation changes. The data is reported through the National Weather Cooperative Observer Program (Coop), which has over 8,700 volunteers across the country.
Jerry Nieman is one of those volunteers. He’s been recording the weather in Lockwood, Missouri, since 2002. He's always been interested in the weather, and weather observing in Lockwood has been in his family for three generations. His grandfather took it over in 1931 and his dad in 1971.
Lockwood’s weather station has over a century's worth of weather records. It’s considered a historical station because of the amount of recorded weather.
Now, Nieman is looking for someone to replace him. He's 84 and said it's becoming harder to record the weather. He’s been trying to recruit his own family for the Coop. He’s been unsuccessful.
"If I can't find somebody, then that's the end of those 122 (years of) records,” he said. “And with the climate the way it is now, you're going to lose a lot of value on data if you don't keep it up."
He said his least favorite thing about recording the weather is going out into the snow. Collecting the data for snow involves melting the snow and gathering the equivalent of water.
Automatic weather systems cost money and don’t record accurate data for the snow, according to Nieman. If the Lockwood station were to become automatic, someone would still have to record the snow for accurate data.
Nieman has recording equipment in his backyard and sends weather data from his computer every day. The three weather recording instruments are visible in his yard through a double sliding glass door.
One machine is a thermometer sensor that reads inside the computer. Another reads any precipitation, but a rain gauge measures it. Nieman sends in the information daily by email. A SD card records the information. He also posts his weather reports on a Facebook page everyday, with a high, low and precipitation for Lockwood.
"You just put the high, low, and present temperature and precip, and then you send it in and it goes into the weather service office at Springfield, but then it goes into the national," Nieman said..
Most of Missouri’s weather data is sent digitally, according to Mark Burchfield with the National Weather Service office in Springfield, Missouri.
Only a few Missouri observers still send in the data by postal mail.
The Coop weather reporting system covers the majority of the state. The Community Collaboration Rain Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRahs) covers the remaining areas.
Burchfield says the information received from the Coop program and CoCoRahs is helpful in the forecasting process.
"Maybe a certain location's been seeing warmer temperatures than we were expecting or lower, and that might help us calibrate some of the forecasts," hesaid.
The first network of Coop weather operating systems in the U.S. started in 1890 under the Organic Act. Its mission is to provide observational meteorological data required to define the U.S. climate, to help measure long-term climate change, and to provide real-time observational meteorological data.
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