A network of weather-monitoring volunteers is looking for a few more Connecticut precipitation enthusiasts to join their ranks.

Members of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network collect data on rain and snowfall in all 50 states, every Canadian province and territory, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. Their data is included in National Weather Service reports, and state and federal agencies use it to predict flooding and drought risk.

It all comes from people's backyards, said Matt Spies, who coordinates about 100 volunteers in Connecticut who have registered as observers for the group.

Among the group are about a dozen volunteers in New London County, though not all of the 100 are actively taking regular measurements, Spies said.

Spies said the network pushes every spring to add observers to the network and said he hopes to eventually cover the whole state.

"Let's put a rain gauge in every town," he said.

Volunteers with CoCoRaHS, as the group is known, measure precipitation amounts in their communities and submit the data for real-time and long-term use by researchers, local water officials and the National Weather Service.

More than 20,000 volunteers in the U.S., the District of Columbia, Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, submitted 4 million reports in 2015.

The National Weather Service uses data collected by the collaborative's network because its manual recordings are often more accurate than the automated measurements taken at airports, said Joe DelliCarpini, a science and operations officer with the weather service in Boston and the coordinator of CoCoRaHS for southern New England.

"We're always trying to recruit more," he said.

Mary Drake got up at 7 a.m. on Monday to measure the snow that had fallen overnight in her backyard in Mystic. Drake purchased the recommended gauge and a ruler for measuring snowfall in 2016 and has been a CoCoRaHS observer ever since. She said she hasn't missed a day — except during trips away from her home — since she started.

"I thought that it would be kind of fun, I've always been interested in the weather," she said.

Some volunteers record more information than others.

"You can really get into it," Drake said.

While many observers send in data every day — either through the CoCoRaHS website or smartphone app — people can decide for themselves how often they want to report.

"Any measurement is better than no measurement," Spies said.

State officials use the information about rainfall to determine whether the state is in a drought and whether Connecticut residents may need to conserve water.

"It is important to know whether we are, in fact, hurting for water, how is it being distributed across the environment (and) around the state," said Ed Hogan, who has been collecting precipitation data from his yard near Pleasure Beach in Waterford daily for two years.

Spies said adding more observers to the network would provide a more accurate account of the state's weather patterns that state and local officials can then use to make policy decisions and predict weather or flooding risk. Gauges at regional airports and academic institutions tell one part of the picture, he said, but precipitation can vary from town to town and even within a community.

"The more pixels, the clearer the picture is," he said.

m.shanahan@theday.com