If you saw my story on El Nino that ran this past week, you saw I spoke with state climatologist Nolan Doesken. Nolan was telling me he is looking to expand his CoCoRaHS weather watcher network. You can find out more by clicking here.

Also, our sister station, KMGH in Denver, has a story you can read below about CoCoRaHS going nationwide.

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A network of volunteer weather watchers started by state climatologist and Colorado State University researcher Nolan Doesken will soon be in all 50 states.

Minnesota will be the 50th state in the network when it joins Tuesday. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, already has about 14,600 volunteers nationwide.

Doesken says scientists across the country use the information from the volunteers. Participants document the size, intensity and patterns of precipitation.

The program was started after five people died in a flood that devastated parts of Fort Collins in July 1997. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is one of the program’s major sponsors.

Falcon and Pueblo West were the areas I had a chance to cature images from this morning, but many of our Neighborhood Weather Network cameras were showing similar sky conditions, what a nice start to the day!

The past few mornings have been absolutely gorgeous across southern Colorado. Here’s a glimpse at what you missed this morning:

With the end of Daylight Savings Time, our sun is setting earlier. Tonight’s sunset was at 4:58pm..and it was a pretty one!

The 2009 Atlantic Hurricane season officially ends November 30, and with one month left, the season remains pretty quiet. Above you see an area of low pressure northeast of the Virgin Islands that could become a tropical cyclone this week. However, its effects would likely be minimal.

We’ve had 8 total named storms so far. Two of them were hurricanes and both were major hurricanes–Hurricane Bill and Hurricane Fred.

Pre-season forecasts issued in December called for 14 named storms and 7 hurricanes, of which 3 would be major (Category 3 or higher). El Nino is likely to blame for the lower number of storms this season. El Nino condtions usually create increased wind shear and an environment that’s poor for hurricane development.