mPING

University of Oklahoma

About this app

mPING UPDATED September 2, 2020! Download the update now!
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The Meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground project (mPING) needs you, the Citizen Scientist, to watch and report on precipitation.

mPING is looking for volunteers of all ages and backgrounds to make observations - teachers, classes, families, everyone, and anyone! This app is your portal for providing observations to researchers at NSSL. Your reports will help them develop and refine algorithms that use the newly upgraded dual-polarization NEXRAD radars to detect and report on the type of precipitation that you see falling. To do a good job, we need tens of thousands of observations from all over the US. We can succeed only with your help.

mPING volunteer observers can spend as much time as they want, from a little to a lot, making observations. The basic idea is simple: NSSL will collect radar data from NEXRAD radars in your area along with sounding data from our models during storm events, and use your data to develop and validate new and better algorithms. We have two focus areas: winter precipitation types, such as rain, freezing rain, drizzle, freezing drizzle, snow, graupel, ice pellets, mixed rain and snow, mixed ice pellets and snow and even observations of “none” when the precipitation has stopped, even if only briefly.

Why? Because the radars cannot see close to the ground at far distances and because automated surface sensors are only at airports. But the people affected by winter weather are everywhere so we need you to tell us what is happening where you are.

But we need more than winter weather details: when there are thunderstorms, we need to know if hail falls and, if it does, how big it is. Measuring with a ruler is best but, whatever you do, stay safe.

All you need to do is use this app to select the precipitation type. Tell us what is hitting the ground. NSSL scientists will compare your report with what the radar has detected and what our models think the atmosphere is doing, and use it to develop new technologies and techniques to determine what kind of precipitation such as snow, ice, rain or hail and its size is falling where.

Ratings and reviews

This would be a great app if it worked reliably. I'm running v 2.1.4 and was able to submit 3 weather reports successfully. As expected with the first. When submitting the second, I started receiving a timeout error, but the report seemed to go through; same with the third. After that, I get nothing but "Please wait..." on the screen. Flushing the cache, clearing all storage, forcing stop and reinstalling have not changed the behavior. I'd love to contribute, but at the moment can't.

The mPing app is a good, easy way to contribute to scientists and meteorologists alike. It is simple: You select what the weather is like in your neighborhood and report, which can actually be fun to do, especially during severe weather and snowstorms. You can also see other weather reports around your area and compare them to yours. mPing also comes with Radarscope, another handy weather app. mPing is fun to use and is recommended to all weather geeks.

It works as is, but I hate we can't have a login to view all our reports over time too and to add individual notes to them later on if we want to expand on our observations for researchers to see more about later on. Just wish it was more user focused and had user features like a login for report histories etc. Was hoping the redesign would give more user focused stuff like that.

What’s new

Updated to support newer devices.