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<br />3) Department of Atmospheric Science. For many years, some faculty and staff of the <br />CSU Department of Atmospheric Science (ATS) have attempted to maintain a <br />cooperative precipitation network in the immediate Fort Collins area. A map of the Fort <br />Collins area was posted on a bulletin board near the foyer of the building early on July 29, <br />and several employees who maintain rain gauges, recorded their rainfall totals there. <br />Most of these observers use 4" diameter clear plastic precipitation gauges which are <br />known to be very accurate for measuring rain. In all, 12 faculty and staff of ATS <br />provided rainfa1l reports. <br /> <br />The first three categories provided some very reliable rainfa1l reports. However, they did not <br />give complete spatial coverage over Fort Collins and eastern Larimer County. Therefore, a <br />campaign was mounted to obtain data from as many other sites as possible. The majority of <br />this was done without leaving the office. <br /> <br />4) Public service announcements. On July 30, 1997, Colorado Climate Center staff <br />contacted a local radio station, KCOL, which was doing nearly continuous flood related <br />broadcasting. The station agreed to broadcast, as a public service, the request for rainfall <br />measurements. Several phone calls resulted from this announcement which probably was <br />aired only on July 30. <br /> <br />5) Radio weathen:asts. Jim Wrrshbom of Mountain States Weather Services made <br />requests for rainfall reports during his local radio weather broadcasts on the local station <br />KllX during the days immediately following the stonn. Several calls came in as a result <br />of this radio announcement. <br /> <br />6) Newspaper. The Fort Collins Coloradoan willingly published a special sidebar to a lead <br />article about the flood on Thursday, July 31. This prominent announcement yielded <br />dozens of responses. Jim Wrrshbonn also included a call for reports in other newspaper <br />stories. In exchange, the newspaper requested permission to publish a story about <br />volunteer stonn reporters and the subsequent rainfall analysis that they helped generate <br />(published August 29). <br /> <br />7) E-Mail inquiries. A 1990's approach to surveying precipitation was used very <br />effectively - the Internet. Electronic mail messages were transmitted to all City of Fort <br />Collins and all Colorado State University employees with e-mail addresses. A limited <br />distn"bution was also made at Hewlett-Packard Company, one of the largest employers in <br />the area. Many responses resulted from these e-mail requests. A benefit of the e-mail <br />surveys was that the original request contained a set of questions about the location of the <br />measurement, type of rain gauge, and times and amounts of precipitation. Many of the <br />responses contained most of the information needed to process the information without <br />needing a follow-up. A copy of the e-mail message distributed to a few thousand <br />addresses in Fort Collins appears in Appendix A <br /> <br />8) Driving surveys. On several different occasions within a few days after the flood, <br />Colorado Climate Center personnel took driving tours of areas affected by the flood. <br />Visits were made to some of the sites that had reported extreme rainfall totals to check on <br />the type and location of gauges. Residents in a few neighborhoods were interviewed, and <br />additional rainfall measurements were discovered. <br /> <br />5 <br />