According to an article published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a new app has been released, in collaboration with the University of Oklahoma, that allows users to “report precipitation from their Apple or Android mobile device.”
The article says that “with the mPING app, anyone can send a weather observation on the go. The user simply opens the app, selects the type of precipitation that is falling at his or her location, and presses submit. The user’s location and the time of the observation are automatically included in the report.”
Kim Elmore, principal investigator and research meteorologist with the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma, shared her thoughts on the new app, saying in the article,
“mPING gives the public a unique opportunity to act as citizen scientists, allowing them to report their observations of precipitation…in real time. Because this nation-wide information will be instantly available from one website, we believe it will be useful for not only researchers, but a variety of groups, including students and teachers, forecasters, TV meteorologists, members of the transportation and aviation industries, city managers and law enforcement.”
To learn more about this new app, read the full article here on the NOAA website.
