MOVED TO ACT. A climatologist haunted by a killer flash flood in his hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado, has been named an "Environmental Hero" for his role in building the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS).
Nolan Doesken, Colorado's state climatologist and a researcher at Colorado State University, was at home the night of 28 July 1997 when it rained more than 35 centimeters in 5 hours. He assumed that the National Weather Service would alert people, but no one called NWS to report the extreme rainfall, which wasn't picked up by radar. "I could have done something, and I didn't," Doesken says about the flood, in which five people died. "It was life-changing."
CREDITS: HENRY REGES/COCORAHS
Within a year, Doesken had organized local citizens to report precipitation in their backyards via the Web--useful data not only when floods are looming but also for climatologists studying drought and water supply. Thanks to federal and state funding, the network now includes 4000 volunteers in 18 states. In December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave him a $200,000 grant to keep CoCoRaHS growing, and last month it honored him. "People are thrilled to help scientists when you make it easy for them to do that," he says.
