Crowdsourcing Precipitation Types at the Ground with mPING

Starting late December 2012 the meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground (mPING) project began crowdsourcing precipitation type reports across the United States using mobile apps on iOS and Android. The mPING project was initially focused on winter weather, with primary interest being in mixed precipitation types including snow, rain and ice pellet mixes. So far, more than 30,000 users have download the mobile apps and have provided over 200,000 precipitation type reports. This study will showcase the method for collecting these reports, and possible uses for the data, including evaluating hydrometeor classification results from dual-pol radars. In addition, a comparison will be made between National Mosaic of QPE (NMQ) radar-derived precipitation types and the results from mPING. Finally, an overview of future work and direction for the mPING project will be given.