For decades, I have had a strong interest in the weather, and so my home is a reporting station for meteorological data. Through an automated Tempest weather station that feeds updates to the internet, anyone may view the current conditions at my location. But as a less automated endeavor, I make a daily report of rainfall to CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. Each morning at a certain time, I and a vast group of registered volunteers across the country go out to take the reading of an accurate rain gauge and send in the reading to the network. This data is compiled and is made available for use by farmers, meteorologists, civic planners, and others. It's quite satisfying to contribute to such a useful organization. The CoCoRaHS network in turn provides me with some nifty graphs and charts of all the data I contribute. So whenever somebody asks me, "What's the weather like?" I can give them an answer far more detailed than they expected.
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