We are into the depths of spring.  In particular, March has been over for a few weeks now.  And, March brought some good news for Florida CoCoRaHS.  As announced in the last newsletter sent out in late January, an observer-recruitment push known as March Madness was last month.   March Madness pitted the 50 states against each other to have the greatest recruitment during March.  Recruitment was measured in two different ways:  one, by the absolute number of new observers without respect to population, and two, by the number of new observers relative to the total population of the state.  In Florida, 135 new observers joined, which was good enough to be the highest absolute number of all the states, earning us one of the "CoCoRaHS Cups", shown below.  Wyoming was able to bring on board 44.36 new observers per million people living there, which allowed them to win in the population-relative category.  We'd like to give a hearty welcome to the many new observers and to thank everyone who had a hand in promoting CoCoRaHS during March (and all the rest of the time, for that matter). 

For the newer observers reading this, we'd like to introduce ourselves as your state co-coordinators.  Ivetta Abramyan is a professor of earth sciences at the Florida State College at Jacksonville, and she previously helped coordinate CoCoRaHS in South Carolina in the state climate office at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.  Danny Brouillette is a climatologist at the Florida Climate Center (Florida's state climate office) at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, having been an observer and county coordinator in DeKalb and Kane counties, northern Illinois, in the late 2000's and early 2010's.  

Additionally, the state is divided into seven regions (see here).  Each region has one or two coordinators who are meteorologists at the local National Weather Service office.  These regional coordinators, with the help of local coordinators in some counties, should be a point of first contact for questions or concerns.  They will also be on the look-out for typos in or other problems with your observations and may contact you by e-mail for clarification.  It will be very much appreciated if you could respond timely to these queries for clarification.  Maintaining the quality of your observations only makes them more valuable! 

In this newsletter, we provide some tips for new observers (and reminders for the seasoned ones), a briefing on the drought and wildfire situation across the state, a selection of comments that you have given with your daily reports, photos of your rain gauges that you have sent us, and more.

Happy observing!