National Weather Service Coop Observers
The National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) is a network of 11,000 volunteers that record official weather observations across the United States. Data is taken from a multitude of geographic regions and topography, and sent to the National Weather Service and National Climatic Data Center for official records. In making these reports, observers use a specialized set of jargon and slang to describe their observations.
Cooperative weather observers often double as storm spotters. Some are also river and coastal watchers, typically reporting gauge readings.
Read more about this topic: Weather Spotting
Famous quotes containing the words national, weather, service and/or observers:
“There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be enjoyed by all.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“An ... important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)