CoCoRHS WxTalk Webinar: Exploring the Enigma that is Drought

Drought will be the subject of our "WxTalk Webinar” on Wednesday, April 1st.  Join us as Mark Svoboda, Director of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, takes a look at this interesting subject.   

Space is limited to the first 500 registrants, so register today! We will notify the first 500 who register of their acceptance to the Webinar. Those who aren't able to attend will be able to watch this episode online the following day.

REGISTRATION INFO

CoCoRaHS WxTalk: Exploring the Enigma that is Drought

Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern, Noon Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific 

"In this talk, we will discuss all things drought and how the NDMC, which celebrated its 30th year in 2025, has provided services here in the U.S. and around the world focused on drought monitoring/early warning, impact assessment, and policy and planning." 

REGISTER HERE

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CoCoRaHS's "Rain Gauge Rally" begins April 1st!  Please recruit a new observer in your state/country/commonwealth
 

The "CoCoRaHS Rain Gauge Rally 2026" (a new month in 2026) is our friendly annual recruiting competition across the CoCoRaHS network to see how many new volunteer observers we can recruit in April.

We have a simple challenge for everyone out there during April: "Would you please take a moment to recommend the program to at least one friend or relative and encourage them to sign up to be a volunteer observer?" That's it, just one (OK, two or three if you are really ambitious). If just half of our 27,000 current volunteers gave this a shot, we could really see the density of our coverage improve. 

To help you with recruiting, a downloadable CoCoRaHS brochure is available by clicking here: CoCoRaHS Brochure. Please also share our very short CoCoRaHS Rain Gauge Rally 26 trailer video.

Like last year, the scoreboard will update in real time, posting an ongoing tally of results by state/country/commonwealth on our "RAIN GAUGE RALLY 2026 PAGE ". The final results will be posted on May 1st. The winning state/country/commonwealth will get to hold onto and display one of the two "CoCoRaHS Cup" trophies until next April. The contest ends at midnight EDT on April 30th.

States/countries/commonwealths will be competing for two national trophies. The first will be awarded in the "Traditional Count" category. This is pretty straightforward. The state/country/commonwealth with the most new volunteers recruited in April 2026 wins. The second category will be "Population Weighted": the state/country/commonwealth that recruits the greatest number of new observers per one million of its total population wins. This second category is a little trickier. For each new volunteer who signs up, the state/country/commonwealth will receive a percentage of "one point" based on its total population (potential volunteer pool). This will give those with sparser populations an equal chance.States/countries/commonwealths with smaller populations will receive a larger point value for a new volunteer compared to those with larger populations (For each new volunteer, Wyoming will receive 1.72 points based on its population of 581,311 residents, whereas California, which will receive a much lower number of points per new volunteer, 0.03 with its population of 39,029,342 residents). These point values are based on "new stations per million residents," which is derived from the estimated population information (https://www.census.gov) 

Good luck to your state/country/commonwealth! Don't forget to tell someone about CoCoRaHS, especially in April!