Another New Feature – Station Activity Summary

I originally wrote this new web page to help the Regional Coordinators manage information on their volunteers but I liked the way it turned out so well, I decided it was too good not to share with everyone :) OK, maybe that's carrying it a bit too far, but these new graphs do display a LOT of interesting data in a small space. You can access this new feature by going to the “reports” section, selecting “Station Activity Summary” in the “Report Type” in the top section and then selecting either an NRD (may need high speed connection for this) or a county (should work for high and low speed connections) in the “Report Area Option” on the lower part of that page.

After you click the View Report button, you will see a separate (small) graph for each station in your selected area and the graph will provide a quick snapshot of all the reported rainfall events. This sounds simple but when you stack all of the graphs on top of each other and sort them by NRD, county or city, they display interesting rainfall patterns for the entire year from location to location. Check it out the next time you are online and I think you will like it.

The above is actually just a nice side benefit because the real reason I wrote this was to show the Coordinators, who in their areas were reporting and who were not, on a regular basis (or at all in some cases). The gauges everyone received are not cheap and we want to make sure we are receiving the most benefit possible out of them by getting them to people really willing to contribute to this volunteer effort. The information on these graphs will display the stations that may need to be reassigned. It also demonstrates we need to do better at quality control. It appears not all data is entirely consistent and this tool will help us spot those unusual data points quickly and easily so we can follow up while the events are still fresh in the observers' minds. (I'll discuss this more in a future newsletter.) This will also be a way we can demonstrate to the Nebraska Environmental Trust that we are allocating their resources responsibly and this is a nice segué into the next topic.

The Future of NeRAIN

I mentioned in a previous newsletter that an application was going to be submitted to the Nebraska Environmental Trust to expand the NeRAIN area to most of the rest of the state. That was done on September 8. Additionally, the State Climatologist has agreed to serve as the regional coordinator for the area of one of the NRDs that had declined to participate so we will now cover all of 88 counties and parts of four more of the 93 total counties in Nebraska if the NET approves our grant request.

OK, I promise, no more new features until I talk about measuring snow.

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