Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, is a network of volunteer weather observers in the United States, Canada, and the Bahamas that take daily readings of precipitation and report them to a central data store over the internet. The network was started in 1997, in Larimer County, Colorado after a flash flood in Spring Creek killed five people and damaged structures in the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, including hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to the Colorado State University campus. The severity of the flood and its
Hail spike Hail spike A hail spike or three body scatter spike (TBSS) is an artifact on a weather radar display indicative of large hail. They are identified by a spike of weak reflectivity echoes that extend out from a thunderstorm, and away from the radar site. Generally known as hail spikes, these are the result of energy from the radar hitting hail, or very heavy rain, and being reflected to the ground, where they reflect back to the hail and then to the radar as in the image on the left. This results in the radar picking up the energy from