National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office

Weather researchers need YOUR help!

The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) has launched a project called PING, or the Precipitation Identification Near the Ground Project.  NSSL wants volunteers across the nation to send them observations of precipitation occurring at their location.  Teachers may find the project provides a great opportunity to teach students about weather.

Observations can be sent in two ways:  via the web, or now, via smartphone applications available for both Apple and Android phones.  The smartphone applications use your phone's GPS to find your coordinates and associate them with your observation.

These observations will be compared to data from weather radars across the country, in order to improve our understanding of precipitation detection via radar, and to develop new technologies and techniques to determine what type of precipitation is falling with a given radar return.

In addition, these reports may be extremely helpful to National Weather Service meteorologists during rapidly evolving weather events.

You can send as few or as many observations as you like, from any location, and all data collected is done so anonymously, with no identifying data other than your GPS coordinates included.

Visit the PING website to learn more about the project.  We hope many people will be excited about becoming a citizen scientist!