![]() The father was transported to a nearby hospital with injuries, police said.Ī third person died in North Carolina's coastal Pender County, where an official called it a medical fatality but did not elaborate.Īnother two people died in Kinston, North Carolina, officials said. With these reports, says Newman, “the NWS offices have a much better ability to monitor potential flooding conditions.Reports of deaths from the storm began to come in.Īmong the dead were a mother and her baby died after a tree fell on their home in Wilmington, North Carolina. CoCoRaHS also helps connect its volunteers with local National Weather Services offices so that the observers can send in real-time, short-fuse rain and snow reports while a storm is unfolding. “Our volunteers have played a big role in documenting big storms,” says CoCoRaHS education coordinator Noah Newman. Roth maintains a website with various rain records related to tropical cyclones, including the highest storm totals on record from each state. “I find CoCoRAHS extremely valuable for the rain maps I’ve made,” says David Roth (NOAA/NWS Weather Prediction Center). The Elizabethtown total is the highest reliable reading on record for any tropical cyclone north of the Gulf Coast. (Becki Odum)Īlong with the 34 inches measured by Odum, CoCoRaHS volunteers established two new preliminary state records for total rainfall from any tropical cyclone: 35.93” about six miles northwest of Elizabethtown, North Carolina, and 23.63 inches about three miles west-southwest of Loris, South Carolina (and about eight miles from the North Carolina border). Waves from Florence crash into coastal structures in Swansboro, N.C. The tiny tipping buckets used in many such stations can’t always keep pace with very heavy rain, and in high winds the buckets can go into vibrational patterns that generate erroneously high rainfall amounts. Also, rain totals from some of these stations may not be reliable during the heaviest events. However, they are not designed to capture the very highest local peaks.Īutomated weather stations, including some COOP precipitation sensors, can keep rolling even when people have evacuated, but they may still be knocked out by power failures. ![]() Broad-scale rainfall estimates-the kind you often seen splashed in bands across brightly colored maps-are obtained through radar data, or by blending radar and satellite data with rain-gauge reports. Filling in the Rain Gapsĭuring hurricanes, winter storms, and other high-end rain and snow events, CoCoRaHS and COOP data are vital for getting an accurate sense of the peak totals. 13-14, dashing into the storm each time to take a quick reading and re-empty the gauge. Odum could tell that wouldn’t be quite enough during the height of Florence, so she made six measurements on Thursday and Friday, Sept. The typical CoCoRaHS gauge can capture at least 11 inches of rain. Also, my family are farmers, so weather is vitally important to them.”Įach CoCoRaHS volunteer is equipped with a high-capacity, NOAA-approved manual rain gauge installed to meet CoCoRaHS guidelines. “My parents and siblings rode out Hurricane Hazel back in 1954, and every year during hurricane season, they would tell stories of how it was when Hazel came through. “I've always been fascinated with weather observations,” says Odum, who joined CoCoRaHS in March 2016. COOP observers typically have an instrument shelter that meets NOAA specifications so that they can record daily high and low temperatures as well as precipitation amounts. (Becki Odum)ĬoCoRaHS operates in parallel with NOAA’s longstanding COOP program (Cooperative Observing Network), which involves more than 10,000 volunteers. Storm-surge flooding swept into Swansboro, N.C., during Florence. The project has since spread to all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Odum is one of more than 20,000 volunteers who measure and report precipitation each morning for CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Observing Network.Īfter a devastating flood struck Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1997, the state climatologist at the time, Nolan Doesken, launched CoCoRaHS as a state project to gain more “ground truth” observations of daily precipitation, including big events. “It was difficult, especially during the time the winds and rain were high,” said Odum, who lives on a farm just a few miles inland from the coastline. Becki Odum, who lives just north of Swansboro, North Carolina, is now part of that elite group.īecki’s five-day total of exactly 34.00 inches, collected from Wednesday to Monday morning during the onslaught of Hurricane Florence, was the second-highest amount measured anywhere during the storm at ground level. ![]() Few people on Earth can say they’ve measured almost 3 feet of rain from a single weather event.
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