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May 14, 2009

ULM Professor tapped for Northeast Louisiana Regional Director spot

Dr. Boniface Mills, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, was appointed to direct the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network for northeastern Louisiana. He will oversee a 16-parish area of the region.

State Director Don Wheeler appointed Mills to the post.

“He will serve to recruit volunteers to take precipitation measurements on a daily basis,” said Wheeler. “Those measurements are entered by the observers into a national database for public use as well as by the National Weather Service. His expertise in the field of meteorology makes him exceptionally suitable for the position.”

CoCoRaHS began as a local project in and around Colorado State University and has since grown to become a national project including 43 states. The community-based network of volunteers measure and map precipitation, which includes rain, hail and snow.

The volunteers represent all ages, occupations and backgrounds and belong to a network of over 12,000 observers.

As CoCoRaHS director of northeast Louisiana, Mills is responsible for Union, Lincoln, Jackson, Winn, Morehouse, Ouachita, Caldwell, LaSalle, Catahoula, Concordia, Franklin, Tensas, Richland, Madison, East Carroll and West Carroll parishes.

Mills said he will visit various organizations in the Louisiana parishes to encourage volunteer weather observing and to heighten awareness about weather in general. Mills said he hoped to increase the density of available precipitation data in the northeast Louisiana region.

CoCoRaHS is a valuable product to the science community or to anyone in the need of precipitation measurements, said Mills.

Potential new CoCoRaHS states for 2009 include Delaware, Maine and New Hampshire; the goal is to have 20,000 observers by 2010.

Those interested in participating may find more information at the CoCoRaHS website: www.cocorahs.org or by e-mail: mills@ulm.edu.

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