Do you know how much precipitation really falls over Grand County? What about Castle Valley compared to Moab or Spanish Valley, or even the east side of Moab compared to the west side?

By becoming a volunteer Water Ranger you would help to enlighten us all. Water Rangers are a community based network of volunteers who help accurately measure the precipitation across our communities. The information they gather assists university researchers in understanding the variability of natural precipitation, which we see here in Grand County when it rains in one area while other parts of the county stay dry.

Water Rangers are trained to use low-cost measuring tools and an interactive website to provide this high-quality data for educational, research and natural resource applications. The program is found in many states in the USA and there are Water Rangers in many counties in Utah, but currently none in Grand County.

Anyone in the community – whether young or old and those in between – can help. The only requirements are an interest in weather, a desire to help and a willingness to regularly report precipitation even when there is none. (Yes, none needs to be reported as well as actual rain or snow.)

You might be asking if there is a cost to being a participant? Well, it’s best to have everyone using a similar or the same measuring device because not all rain gauges are created equal, not even automated devices. The Water Rangers use a 4-inch diameter gauge that has been tested against the National Weather Service’s 8-inch diameter gauge and some automated gauges. The 4-inch and 8-inch gauges match well in how they measure precipitation while some automated rain gauges were off by as much as 25 percent and most automated gauges don’t work well with snow.

These 4-inch gauges can be bought online for approximately $30, including shipping. However, if we hold a workshop here in Grand County we could purchase the same ones for only $18. That and the cost of setting it up would be your total cost.

So, what I am proposing is that anyone who is interested should call me at the USU Extension office at 259-7558. If we can get a group of people together who are interested then Robert Davies, with the Utah Water Rangers and Utah Climate Center, has offered to have someone come down and give us an overview of the program, sign up volunteers and offer the measuring devices at the $18 cost.

You can go online and sign up without attending a class and purchase a gauge on your own, but Robert and I thought having a face-to-face local program where you can meet like-minded individuals and have him or a colleague here discuss the project, answer questions, and talk about other ways you could help would benefit those with real interest and help those with potential interest determine if it’s right for them. The meeting will be just to provide the information and those attending can sign up then, later or not at all.

Those individuals who do become involved would be helping with precipitation research in our community, the state and across the nation. Once we have some Water Rangers reporting anyone would be able to check the website to see what we are reporting and the county would be able to have annual reports developed for our area from our observations.

If you would like to know more about any of the issues raised in my articles call the Utah State University Extension Grand County office at 259-7558.