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Curiosity Finds Evidence of an Ancient Sandstorm
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DescriptionBillions of years ago, an hours-long Martian sandstorm blew so intensely that sand ripples began to climb upon one another as they moved across the surface. These layers of sediment eventually hardened into the multilayered rocks seen in this image, which was taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Dec. 12, 2024, the 4,391st Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Scientists believe this is the first evidence of climbing wind ripple strata on the Red Planet. Spotted at a location nicknamed “Jawbone Canyon,” these rocks are a rare time capsule preserving a dramatic wind event early in Martian history. A paper detailing the discovery was featured on the cover of the journal Geology on July 1, 2026.
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Scientists discover a ‘remarkable’ new monkey species with orange lips and a froglike roar
The new species, Colobus congoensis, may already be endangered
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Provides Sweeping View of Broom Point
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PIA26755 Figure APNG (16.15 MB)
DescriptionThis view looking back up at the outside lip of the 490-foot-tall (150-meter-tall) rim of Jezero Crater was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance on May 15, 2025, the 1,505th day, or sol, of the rover’s mission to Mars.
The bright-colored rocks exposed across the slope, running from middle left to middle right of the image, belong to a formation the science team calls the “Broom Point member,” a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock. This sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover. Evidence uncovered by Perseverance indicates this thick section of rock was built by repeated asteroid strikes, with layers tilting at nearly vertical angles exceeding 80 degrees due to the subsequent colossal impacts that created the Isidis Basin and Jezero Crater.
The rover’s tracks are visible in the image, showing Perseverance’s descent of the steep crater rim slope.
Figure A
Figure A includes annotations:
- Dashed yellow lines indicate upper and lower boundaries of the Broom Point member
- Black lines indicate rover traverses
- White circles indicate locations rover stopped for science collection
- Red icons indicate locations of cored samples collected by Perseverance: “Bell Island” on April 22, 2025 (Sol 1,483) and “Main River” on March 10, 2025 (Sol 1,441)
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Provides Sweeping View of Broom Point
PNG (16.27 MB)
PIA26755 Figure APNG (16.15 MB)
DescriptionThis view looking back up at the outside lip of the 490-foot-tall (150-meter-tall) rim of Jezero Crater was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance on May 15, 2025, the 1,505th day, or sol, of the rover’s mission to Mars.
The bright-colored rocks exposed across the slope, running from middle left to middle right of the image, belong to a formation the science team calls the “Broom Point member,” a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock. This sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover. Evidence uncovered by Perseverance indicates this thick section of rock was built by repeated asteroid strikes, with layers tilting at nearly vertical angles exceeding 80 degrees due to the subsequent colossal impacts that created the Isidis Basin and Jezero Crater.
The rover’s tracks are visible in the image, showing Perseverance’s descent of the steep crater rim slope.
Figure AFigure A includes annotations:
- Dashed yellow lines indicate upper and lower boundaries of the Broom Point member
- Black lines indicate rover traverses
- White circles indicate locations rover stopped for science collection
- Red icons indicate locations of cored samples collected by Perseverance: “Bell Island” on April 22, 2025 (Sol 1,483) and “Main River” on March 10, 2025 (Sol 1,441)
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/
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How to avoid getting cyclosporiasis—and why washing lettuce may not be enough
Case numbers of this parasite-caused illness have exploded in the last week. An expert explains how to try and stay safe
Perseverance’s Trip to ‘Broom Point’
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DescriptionThis orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took to get to a location the science team has dubbed the “Broom Point member,” a sequence of layered bedrock likely more than 3.9 billion years old. As planned, the rover landed inside Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. It investigated the crater’s western delta and inlet river valley, Neretva Vallis, before summiting the crater rim in December 2024 following a rim-to-crest climb of 2,620 feet (800 meters).
The Broom Point region is situated on the outer edge of the crater rim and was visited by the rover in mid-2025. The yellow dot indicates location where the rover took a selfie.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/
JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built MRO and supports its operations. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado.
For more information, visit:
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
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Perseverance’s Trip to ‘Broom Point’
PNG (16.62 MB)
DescriptionThis orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took to get to a location the science team has dubbed the “Broom Point member,” a sequence of layered bedrock likely more than 3.9 billion years old. As planned, the rover landed inside Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. It investigated the crater’s western delta and inlet river valley, Neretva Vallis, before summiting the crater rim in December 2024 following a rim-to-crest climb of 2,620 feet (800 meters).
The Broom Point region is situated on the outer edge of the crater rim and was visited by the rover in mid-2025. The yellow dot indicates location where the rover took a selfie.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/
JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built MRO and supports its operations. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado.
For more information, visit:
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
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Mathematicians are closing in on the hidden order inside chaos
A new breakthrough pushes the limits of randomness, bringing a decades-old mathematical mystery closer to resolution
Observers Beware: Reflect Orbital’s Space Mirrors Approved for Launch
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved the launch of Reflect Orbital's Earendil 1 satellite — a space mirror 18 meters wide designed to reflect sunlight to the ground.
The post Observers Beware: Reflect Orbital’s Space Mirrors Approved for Launch appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
What's It Like to Travel Near the Speed of Light? Part 1: The Broken View
You can't ride alongside a beam of light, and the reason why opens a door onto the strangest parts of relativity. A tour of rest frames, why a photon has no point of view, and how your speed reshapes reality itself.
Spiral Arms and Bars are Galactic Fuel Pumps for Star Formation
Astronomers thought that early galaxies were messy, clumpy, and turbulent from mergers. That means their gas was all stirred up. So what could explain the rapid star formation during the Cosmic Noon? New research shows that galaxies had well-ordered morphologies earlier than thought, and that their spiral arms and bars allowed gas to flow freely, forming more stars.
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reads Record of Ancient Mars Impacts
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Perseverance took this selfie at “Witch Hazel Hill” on Jezero Crater’s rim on May 10, 2025. The small dark hole in the rock in front of the rover is the borehole made when the rover collected the “Bell Island” sample. The small puff of dust left of center and below the horizon line is a dust devil.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. Referred to as the “Broom Point member” by the rover’s science team, this sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.
Released Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the findings offer a window into one of the most tumultuous chapters in the history of the solar system.
“Since leaving Jezero, Perseverance has been exploring a brand-new frontier, both geographically and geologically — a chapter of Martian time that predates the crater itself,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance deputy project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “On Earth, our earliest geologic history has been fundamentally broken up, deformed, and erased by plate tectonics. Because Mars lacks plate tectonics to recycle its crust, this ancient record remains intact, giving us a rare glimpse into a geological time period that doesn’t exist on our own planet.”
Reading between layersAfter ascending the western rim of Jezero Crater in late 2024, Perseverance began examining surrounding locations with its science instruments. Their data at Broom Point revealed six distinct rock types, including breccias — rocks composed of angular fragments — alternating with layers of fine-grained, pulverized rock dust. Rock fragments within the breccias are pocked with gas-bubble cavities, indicating they were once molten.
The presence of tiny, dark, glassy beads within the layers offered an important clue about how these rocks formed. While volcanoes can produce similar glassy droplets, they rarely occur in such high abundance, pointing to asteroid impacts, instead, as the primary architect. In fact, the largest beads rival those flung out by the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid’s impact on Earth.
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured its own tracks descending from the rim of Jezero Crater. The bright-colored rocks running from middle left to middle right of the image, a formation dubbed the “Broom Point member,” are likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making them among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
The repetition of these distinct rock types multiple times throughout this thick sequence of rock indicates that high-energy impact events happened again and again across this region of early Mars.
“The different rock layers are a record of variable-sized impacts occurring at different distances from where this rock sequence was accumulating,” said Alex Jones, a Ph.D. student in planetary geology at Imperial College London and lead author of the paper. “Some large impacts took place very far away, some small impacts nearby. Their debris all ended up landing here, constructing this thick section of rock.”
How these layers formed may suggest an interaction with water or ice. Several of the layers look like they may have been formed by fast, ground-hugging debris flows. On Earth, these powerful, fluidlike surges can occur when molten rock hits water or ice that instantly flashes into steam.
Cosmic one-two punchSome of Broom Point’s layers tilt at angles exceeding 80 degrees — nearly vertical — which is far too steep to be caused by the impact that created Jezero Crater.
Instead, scientists suspect a cosmic “one-two punch” shaped this landscape long ago. First, a colossal asteroid impact created the 1,200-mile-wide (1,900-kilometer-wide) Isidis Basin, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, upending and tilting the once-flat rock layers. Later, a second asteroid likely struck, forming Jezero Crater, which measures 28 miles (45 kilometers) across. This second impact fractured and uplifted the already-tilted rocks into the dramatic formations the rover sees today.
To pin down exactly when these events took place, the Perseverance team collected two core samples, dubbed “Bell Island” and “Main River.” If a future mission were to return them to Earth, laboratory dating could determine when and how often impacts were occurring on early Mars — and, by extension, the infant Earth, whose own early impact record has been erased by billions of years of plate tectonics.
“During this violent era, it wasn’t rain or snow falling from the sky, but an almost constant barrage of molten rock droplets and pulverized dust kicked up by asteroid impacts,” said Jones. “If we can pin down the ages of these layers, it would be like reading a cosmic weather report from 4 billion years ago.”
This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took from its 2021 landing site in Jezero Crater to the “Broom Point” location in mid-2025.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MRO/HIRISE/UA/ICL More about Perseverance
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Arizona State University leads the operations of the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras. SuperCam is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the instrument’s Body Unit was developed. The rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument was built at NASA JPL, and its WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera was built at Malin Space Science Systems.
For more information on NASA’s Perseverance, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
2026-045
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reads Record of Ancient Mars Impacts
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Perseverance took this selfie at “Witch Hazel Hill” on Jezero Crater’s rim on May 10, 2025. The small dark hole in the rock in front of the rover is the borehole made when the rover collected the “Bell Island” sample. The small puff of dust left of center and below the horizon line is a dust devil.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSNASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. Referred to as the “Broom Point member” by the rover’s science team, this sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.
Released Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the findings offer a window into one of the most tumultuous chapters in the history of the solar system.
“Since leaving Jezero, Perseverance has been exploring a brand-new frontier, both geographically and geologically — a chapter of Martian time that predates the crater itself,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance deputy project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “On Earth, our earliest geologic history has been fundamentally broken up, deformed, and erased by plate tectonics. Because Mars lacks plate tectonics to recycle its crust, this ancient record remains intact, giving us a rare glimpse into a geological time period that doesn’t exist on our own planet.”
Reading between layersAfter ascending the western rim of Jezero Crater in late 2024, Perseverance began examining surrounding locations with its science instruments. Their data at Broom Point revealed six distinct rock types, including breccias — rocks composed of angular fragments — alternating with layers of fine-grained, pulverized rock dust. Rock fragments within the breccias are pocked with gas-bubble cavities, indicating they were once molten.
The presence of tiny, dark, glassy beads within the layers offered an important clue about how these rocks formed. While volcanoes can produce similar glassy droplets, they rarely occur in such high abundance, pointing to asteroid impacts, instead, as the primary architect. In fact, the largest beads rival those flung out by the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid’s impact on Earth.
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured its own tracks descending from the rim of Jezero Crater. The bright-colored rocks running from middle left to middle right of the image, a formation dubbed the “Broom Point member,” are likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making them among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSSThe repetition of these distinct rock types multiple times throughout this thick sequence of rock indicates that high-energy impact events happened again and again across this region of early Mars.
“The different rock layers are a record of variable-sized impacts occurring at different distances from where this rock sequence was accumulating,” said Alex Jones, a Ph.D. student in planetary geology at Imperial College London and lead author of the paper. “Some large impacts took place very far away, some small impacts nearby. Their debris all ended up landing here, constructing this thick section of rock.”
How these layers formed may suggest an interaction with water or ice. Several of the layers look like they may have been formed by fast, ground-hugging debris flows. On Earth, these powerful, fluidlike surges can occur when molten rock hits water or ice that instantly flashes into steam.
Cosmic one-two punchSome of Broom Point’s layers tilt at angles exceeding 80 degrees — nearly vertical — which is far too steep to be caused by the impact that created Jezero Crater.
Instead, scientists suspect a cosmic “one-two punch” shaped this landscape long ago. First, a colossal asteroid impact created the 1,200-mile-wide (1,900-kilometer-wide) Isidis Basin, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, upending and tilting the once-flat rock layers. Later, a second asteroid likely struck, forming Jezero Crater, which measures 28 miles (45 kilometers) across. This second impact fractured and uplifted the already-tilted rocks into the dramatic formations the rover sees today.
To pin down exactly when these events took place, the Perseverance team collected two core samples, dubbed “Bell Island” and “Main River.” If a future mission were to return them to Earth, laboratory dating could determine when and how often impacts were occurring on early Mars — and, by extension, the infant Earth, whose own early impact record has been erased by billions of years of plate tectonics.
“During this violent era, it wasn’t rain or snow falling from the sky, but an almost constant barrage of molten rock droplets and pulverized dust kicked up by asteroid impacts,” said Jones. “If we can pin down the ages of these layers, it would be like reading a cosmic weather report from 4 billion years ago.”
This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took from its 2021 landing site in Jezero Crater to the “Broom Point” location in mid-2025.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MRO/HIRISE/UA/ICL More about PerseveranceNASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Arizona State University leads the operations of the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras. SuperCam is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the instrument’s Body Unit was developed. The rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument was built at NASA JPL, and its WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera was built at Malin Space Science Systems.
For more information on NASA’s Perseverance, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
2026-045
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Volunteer Measures Record Louisiana Rainfall
“I didn’t sign up to try to measure a new record or anything”, said Matt Carnicle, a volunteer for the NASA-sponsored Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, project. Carnicle measured a whopping 29.06 inches of rainfall on June 18th, 2026, breaking an all-time 24-hour record for the state of Louisiana of 22.00 inches. “I’m just a regular guy who likes to track the weather, and I report what I get in my gauge whether it’s zero, two hundredths, or whatever is in there when I read it.”
CoCoRaHS (pronounced KO-ko-rozz) is a network of volunteer weather observers of all ages working together to measure and map rain, hail, and snow by measuring precipitation in their backyards. Together, these thousands of daily precipitation reports – openly available on the project website – are used by scientists and citizens for a wide variety of purposes, to include improving weather forecasting, informing water and land management, driving atmospheric models, and triggering flash flood and severe weather warnings.
Matt joined through a storm-spotter class where he learned how CoCoRaHS is part of a NASA hail research project focused on Gulf States in the Southeast United States. CoCoRaHS reports (and photos) of hail are used for researching the “melt rate” between when the satellite estimates the stone sizes in the clouds and what volunteers measure on the ground. Matt took it a step further and purchased a standardized rain gauge in order to participate with CoCoRaHS by measuring rainfall.
Matt’s June 18, 2026 rain measurement shatters Louisiana’s 1962 state record of 22.00 inches of rain in 24-hours (Hawaii holds the national record with 49.69 inches in 24-hours). Even more remarkably, the 29.06 inches he measured fell in less than 12 hours! According to Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes, who validated Matt’s measurement along with National Weather Service representatives, an event of this magnitude in this area is expected to happen less than once in a thousand years. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) committee will convene in the coming months to verify and document the new record.
You can join Matt and other CoCoRaHS volunteers and submit official rainfall reports to the National Weather Service. They’re also on the lookout for hail in the southeast, where CoCoRaHS and NASA are doing research on how hail melts as it moves from the clouds to the ground. The only requirement for participation is that volunteers use the correct manual gauge, which is precise to the nearest 1/100th of an inch and is approved by the National Weather Service (measurements from automated rain gauges are not accepted). Sign up here, and you might measure the next record precipitation event: https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/community-collaborative-rain-hail-and-snow-network/
From left to right: National Weather Service Lake Charles Warning Coordination Meteorologist Doug Cramer, National Weather Service Lake Charles meteorologist Jonathan Brazzell, rain gauge owner/observer Matt Carnicle, and Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes. Carnicle’s arm is around the CoCoRaHS rain gauge. https://www.cocorahs.org/Image credit: Matt Carnicle. Learn More and Get Involved Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS)
Join a national community of precipitation reporters providing critical data to improve scientific understanding and forecasts.
Facebook logo @nasascience_ @nasascience_ Instagram logo @nasascience_ Linkedin logo @nasascience_Volunteer Measures Record Louisiana Rainfall
“I didn’t sign up to try to measure a new record or anything”, said Matt Carnicle, a volunteer for the NASA-sponsored Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, project. Carnicle measured a whopping 29.06 inches of rainfall on June 18th, 2026, breaking an all-time 24-hour record for the state of Louisiana of 22.00 inches. “I’m just a regular guy who likes to track the weather, and I report what I get in my gauge whether it’s zero, two hundredths, or whatever is in there when I read it.”
CoCoRaHS (pronounced KO-ko-rozz) is a network of volunteer weather observers of all ages working together to measure and map rain, hail, and snow by measuring precipitation in their backyards. Together, these thousands of daily precipitation reports – openly available on the project website – are used by scientists and citizens for a wide variety of purposes, to include improving weather forecasting, informing water and land management, driving atmospheric models, and triggering flash flood and severe weather warnings.
Matt joined through a storm-spotter class where he learned how CoCoRaHS is part of a NASA hail research project focused on Gulf States in the Southeast United States. CoCoRaHS reports (and photos) of hail are used for researching the “melt rate” between when the satellite estimates the stone sizes in the clouds and what volunteers measure on the ground. Matt took it a step further and purchased a standardized rain gauge in order to participate with CoCoRaHS by measuring rainfall.
Matt’s June 18, 2026 rain measurement shatters Louisiana’s 1962 state record of 22.00 inches of rain in 24-hours (Hawaii holds the national record with 49.69 inches in 24-hours). Even more remarkably, the 29.06 inches he measured fell in less than 12 hours! According to Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes, who validated Matt’s measurement along with National Weather Service representatives, an event of this magnitude in this area is expected to happen less than once in a thousand years. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) committee will convene in the coming months to verify and document the new record.
You can join Matt and other CoCoRaHS volunteers and submit official rainfall reports to the National Weather Service. They’re also on the lookout for hail in the southeast, where CoCoRaHS and NASA are doing research on how hail melts as it moves from the clouds to the ground. The only requirement for participation is that volunteers use the correct manual gauge, which is precise to the nearest 1/100th of an inch and is approved by the National Weather Service (measurements from automated rain gauges are not accepted). Sign up here, and you might measure the next record precipitation event: https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/community-collaborative-rain-hail-and-snow-network/
From left to right: National Weather Service Lake Charles Warning Coordination Meteorologist Doug Cramer, National Weather Service Lake Charles meteorologist Jonathan Brazzell, rain gauge owner/observer Matt Carnicle, and Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes. Carnicle’s arm is around the CoCoRaHS rain gauge. https://www.cocorahs.org/Image credit: Matt Carnicle. Learn More and Get Involved Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS)Join a national community of precipitation reporters providing critical data to improve scientific understanding and forecasts.
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