CoCoRaHS
I decided to join CoCoRaHS after all. It's the community of amateur rain gauge readers that I wrote about recently. Since I have their rain gauge, and I'm taking daily measurements, I might as well submit my data to them. They have training material online that I read through. I was discouraged at first, because according to their guidelines I don't have a good place to put a rain gauge, but at the end they said in urban areas there often aren't any good spots, so just do your best. My rain gauge is attached to a post on our deck, which is about the only spot in our yard that isn't covered by trees.
They also recommend taking measurements every day at 7am. I'm not quite that dedicated, but fortunately they accept measurements any time between 4:30am and 9:30am. That I can handle. It's neat to see my data plotted on the county map each day, and see how much rain other observers in the county recorded. I've also been amazed at all the other observations you can submit besides rainfall. Things like:
- Hail (they have instructions on making a hail pad out of styrofoam to measure hail size)
- Snow depth and water content of snow (there are entire training sections devoted to these topics)
- Significant weather events, like extremely heavy rain or snow (these reports are sent immediately to the National Weather Service and have proved vital in helping the NWS decide when to issue flood warnings)
- Thunder frequency (there are instructions on how to count thunder claps)
- Even the shape of snowflakes! (They have pics of the predominant snowflake shapes, like stellar dendrites, sectored plates, and rimed crystals, among others.)
All of these are optional, of course. They point out that we are volunteers, and we should only do what we can handle.
One other neat thing is that once you've submitted 100 rainfall observations, your data is included in the Global Historical Climate Network, which is used by researchers around the world.
Bird's Nest
I noticed a while ago that a robin built a nest on top of the electric meter on the side of our house.
This does not seem like a good location! It looks precariously balanced, and is only about waist high, seemingly well within the reach of an animal like a raccoon. But apparently I know nothing about bird nests, because its been working out for them. Over the past few weeks eggs appeared in the nest, followed by four very ugly little baby birds which then quickly grew into more bird-like fledglings. Yesterday we took a peek in the nest, and there was 1 little bird left. Apparently we startled it, because it hopped/flapped onto the ground, and one of the parents flew over to protect it. I assume/hope that the other little birds had already done the same.
Turtle's Nest
Last week we went on a hike at a nearby park, and came across a turtle that seemed to be digging a nest to lay eggs. Once again, I thought it didn't seem like a good place, because it was right by the hiking trail. But what do I know about turtle nests?
Geocaching
Earlier this spring, Wendy and I started geocaching. The conservation district has a geocaching program that highlights the best hikes at parks around the county. You get a trivia question about the park, and GPS coordinates to a container along the hike that has the answer. Answer all the questions and you get a badge. It's a neat way to explore new areas.
So it's been surprising to me at how un-fun some of our geocaching hikes have been! We started in late March and were wholly unprepared for how soggy the trails were from melting snow. Our shoes would be soaked all the way through to our socks by the end. You would think we'd learn our lesson, but we kept thinking conditions would dry out by our next hike, only to discover that was not the case. Our most recent hike was a few weeks ago, and not only were the trails still wet, but the mosquitoes were out in force and we didn't think to bring bug spray!
I've also been annoyed with the geocaching app I've been using to navigate to the right coordinates. It tries really hard to make you upgrade to the premium version. On the most recent hike, we couldn't even find the container because the app refused to navigate us unless we paid up. Very frustrating.
Perhaps all of these troubles were foreshadowed on our very first geocache hike, when we came across a dead body!
Yes, it was the dead body of a fish. But a dead body nonetheless!