Citizen Science Condition Monitoring Project

This project engages with citizen scientists and the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow (CoCoRaHS) Network to promote drought impacts reporting. Observers provide weekly “condition monitoring” reports to document effects of weather and climate on their communities. 

In collaboration with the National Integrated Drought Information System, the National Drought Mitigation Center, and the CoCoRaHS network, the Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments (CISA) program developed the Condition Monitoring approach as a pilot under the Coastal Carolinas Drought Early Warning System (now part of the Southeast DEWS). This successful regional effort was expanded to a national scale in 2016. As of November 2019, over 48,000 reports had been submitted by more nearly 4,500 observers.