The PING Project

Hey all, late last night I was checking some weather data and thought to check to see how the NWS doppler weather radar upgrade program to "Dual Polarization" was progressing. It is looking like they just about have this finished.
Something I ran across while on the NSSL (National Severe Storms Lab) site piqued my interest. Being a "Sky Warn" member I checked it out and enlisted.
It is called "The PING Project". PING being the acronym for "Precipitation Identification Near the Ground".
One of the inherent problems with weather radar that it has somewhat limited precip detection, specially the farther away from the radar site the precip is falling with relation to the ground. Couple this with questions about what type the precipitation is...led to a dilemma at NSSL. While weather radar has improved over time these guys are looking to improve on it even more. And while the NWS has long had reporting mechanisms in place it was decided that to help improve the algorithms with which weather radar operates a different kind of report database was needed.
Thus "PING" was born.
In mid-December of last year the "mPING" mobile app for android and iPhones was introduced. In the first month NSSL received 25,000 reports. The mobile app is pretty sweet. You are able to report from many different types of winter precip as well as hail. It only takes a moment to make your report.
I invite you to check this out. From severe hail to road choking snowfalls any near term weather prediction improvements that can be made is of benefit to the whole community.
Here is the link for the PING Project.

www.nssl.noaa.gov...

Mike

reply to post by mjp54


That's pretty cool,thanks for sharing that.
Our weather service here locally has something similar with facebook and people reporting in real time during bad storms and such and they compare the reports to the readings they are get from the radar.