The "CoCoRaHS Rain Gauge Rally 2025" (a new name as last year's try landed with a thud), is our friendly annual recruiting competition between all of our CoCoRaHS U.S. states to see how many new volunteer observers we can recruit during the month of March.

We have a simple challenge to everyone out there during the month:: "Would you please take a moment to recommend the program to at least one friend or relative and encourage them to sign up to be a volunteer observer?" That's it just one (OK, two or three if you are really ambitious). If just half of our 27.000 current volunteers gave this a shot, we could really see the density of our coverage improve. 

To help you with recruiting a downloadable CoCoRaHS brochure is available by clicking here: CoCoRaHS Brochure. Please share our very short CoCoRaHS Rain Gauge Rally 25 trailer video as well.

Like last year the scoreboard will update in real time, posting an ongoing tally of results by state/country/commonwealthon our "RAIN GAUGE RALLY 2025  PAGE". The final results posted on April 1st. The winning state/country/commonwealthwill get to hold onto and display one of the two "CoCoRaHS Cup" trophies until next March. The contest ends at midnight EDT on March 31st.

Like last year, states will be competing for two national trophies. The first will be awarded in the "Traditional Count" category. This is pretty straight forward. The state/country/commonwealthwith the most new volunteers recruited in March 2025 wins. The second category will be "Population Weighted" . . . the state/country/commonwealth that recruits the greatest number of new observers per one million of its total population wins. This second category is a little trickier. For each new volunteer who signs-up, the state/country/commonwealthwill be given a percentage of "one point" based on the state/country/commonwealth's total population (potential volunteer pool). This will give those with sparser populations an equal chance.States/countries/commonwealths with smaller populations will receive a larger point value for a new volunteer compared to those with larger populations (For each new volunteer Wyoming will receive 1.72 points based on their population of 581,311 residents, whereas California who will receive a much lower number of points per each new volunteer, 0.03 with their population of 39,029,342 residents). These point values are based on "new stations per million residents" which is derived from the 2024 estimated population information (https://www.census.gov.) 

Good luck to your state/country/commonwealth! Don't forget to tell someone about CoCoRaHS, especially in March!

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The "Total SWE Monday" Habit . . . Please give it a try!

The National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center utilizes CoCoRaHS reports of precipitation, snowfall, snow depth and the water equivalent of the snow on the ground every day. CoCoRaHS data provide critical "Ground Truth" information that can improve the skill of their products and models. This will improve the accuracy of flood forecasts in the weeks and months ahead. Click here to see how your CoCoRaHS SWE Reports are used by NOHRSC

Their guidance to us has been that if you can only report one day a week it’s best to all report on the same day. Monday was chosen:

"The analysts at NOHRSC prefer a Total Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) observation taken once a week on Monday. The simple reason is that digging cores every day ruins your sample snowfield area (unless you have a big yard or open fields nearby).

A flood of Monday morning SWE reports gives us a better picture of the overall snowpack instead of a few scattered results trickling in throughout the week. Daily total SWE would be great, but let's make "Total SWE Monday" a habit.

(Note: If you have the room, more frequent observations are appreciated, especially when conditions are changing. For areas that only infrequently get snow, there is no need to wait for Monday -- report SWE whenever you have the chance). For instructions on how to take core samples and report the snowpack SWE, please view our on-line training materials on snow: Training Slide Shows or watch the YouTube short animation on: SWE.