Meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground (mPING) is a project to collect weather information from the public through their smart phone or mobile device. The free mPING mobile app was developed through a partnership between NSSL, the University of Oklahoma and the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies.
Users with the mPING app can select what type of weather is occurring and submit a report. The user’s location and the time of the observation are automatically included, and they can send reports every minute if they choose.
All reports in the mPING database, both past and real-time, can be viewed here on the mPING web site. This allows anyone to see all observations in time and space to better identify the locations where hazardous weather may exist.
To further analyze the data, researchers will compare the reports with what radars detect and use the information to develop new radar and forecasting technologies and techniques. Researchers hope to build a valuable database of tens of thousands of observations from across the United States.