First I would like to thank all of you for volunteering your time and effort to help make this project a success. You can see (when you can get access to the site - more about that later) from all of the reports coming in that the information is very interesting. It is fascinating to see the rainfall patterns being reported across the state and particularly exciting to finally see some rain falling on western Nebraska for a change. The information coming in will be valuable for many projects in the future.

The bad news, as many of you are frustratingly aware of, has been access to the site. My office, the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, is hosting the NeRAIN site but has unfortunately been experiencing access problems to the entire DNR site. The IT staff have narrowed it down to the firewall that protects the site from hackers and viruses. Apparently the firewall has decided the best way to keep out the bad guys is to keep nearly everyone else out too. At any rate, IT is diligently working on the problem and hope that installing an upgrade version of the firewall software this week will be the solution. I’ll try to keep you informed about that.

What can we do in the mean time?

Until this firewall problem is solved, the best way to handle the situation is to keep a daily log of your recordings. Continue to try to read your gauge around 7:00 AM and record your information on a written log. Then try to sign on to the website to enter your data but don’t waste a lot of time right now trying to get it in right at 7:00. The way the system is currently operating, getting it in later in the day or even the next day or later in the week is certainly better than the frustration of trying to fight your way through a firewall that doesn’t want to let you in. I hope you can sense some of my frustration with the situation too :) We’ll get back to “Plan A” (getting the data in relatively promptly) later when the system is operating as it should be.

Do you record for more than one site?

Several new features are being planned for the site but one is already in place that should help those of you that enter data for more than one station. Currently you have to re-log in for each site you monitor and that is sort of a hassle to do. If you are one of those that do manage more than one site, please contact me at rkern@dnr.ne.gov and I’ll set you up to make this much easier to do. Be sure to let me know your StationName (ex. linc002) and the StationNames of the other sites you are responsible for.

New Features for the site?

Last week I just added reports to graph the number of reports per day (Graph Precip Reports) and the maximum rainfall per day (Graph Maximum Precip) at http://dnrdata.dnr.ne.gov/NeRAIN/Reports/Index.asp. I want to set up more reports so we can see also the multiple-day and hail information that is coming in. I also want to see if we can link up with the National Weather Service and pull their data into our system so we can get an even better distribution of reports. What else? You tell me. What would you like to see on the site? Other than the access issue, can you suggest ways to improve the site?

More Later

I’ll try to send out reports occasionally to keep you informed of the progress with the NeRAIN project. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you the firewall problem is solved soon but please be patient as we trudge through the access problems.

Thanks again for volunteering for NeRAIN.

Rich Kern
Nebraska Department of Natural Resources
301 Centennial Mall South
P.O. Box 94676
Lincoln, NE 68509-4676
(402) 471-3948
rkern@dnr.ne.gov