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Weather Bug - What data is available?


CJVann

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  • 3 months later...
Posted

Yesterday's rain was being logged by WB until around 3p.m. when my ISY (watching KAUN) suddenly showed Rain Today: 0. I checked other stations in this area and they all showed 0 even though we had well over 0.25" at the time. Needless to say that messed up the ISY's calculations for irrigation requirement. Yesterday was the first time in quite a while I've had occasion to pay attention to rainfall on my ISY, mostly because it was the first rainfall we've had for a looong time.

 

Has anyone else noticed anything similar?

 

mike

Posted

I've been watching the Rain Today: value quite a bit today as well. At 9a.m. it was .04", at 10a.m. it was .01" and at 1p.m. it was .18". We'll see what happens for the remainder of today.

 

mike

Posted

Same weird rain today reporting for me as well. An hour ago ISY showed .6" rain today from KBAB (which seemed low for today). I changed station to KLHN and KAUN to see if the rain reported was any different. ISY reported 0" for both. Changed back to KBAB (the original station) and ISY is now reporting 0 inches. Just checked again and its still 0 inches.

 

Thanks,

Tim

 

edit. just checked the wb feed website and rain today shows N/A whereas KLHN is showing 0.00 inches. Must be WB issue...still.

Posted

KAUN is showing 0 now also. I got busy and didn't catch the exact time of the change. Over the last 2 days WB has caused my ISY to miss around an inch of rainfall.

 

mike

Posted

Tim and Mike,

 

I switched my ISY to log data from KUAN. A partial listing of the log is shown below.

 

The yellow items are "anomalies":

1) Low temperature - should never increase during a given day

2) Light: Station suddenly began transmitting light data (more on this below).

3) Rain today: should never decrease during a given day.

4) Elevation - obviously should not change unless KAUN suddenly became mobile. Did I miss an earthquake in your area?

 

The issue is Weatherbug switching stations in an attempt to provide a continuous data stream. I do not know the conditions that cause the switch. I suspect the station at 130' elevation is McClellen AFB in Sacramento.

 

In short, I do not know how to prevent this other than finding a "very reliable station". Reliable is very misleading in this sense. The local airports in my area are not reliable in a Weatherbug sense. I believe they get overloaded with requests at some points and cause wetherbug to re-vector to an available station.

 

I wound up switching to a backyard station a mile up the road. It's not NWS certified, but weatherbug has not switched away from this station in over 8 months.

 

Note - times shown below are Eastern. Subtract 3 hours for your local time

 

Kaun.gif

Posted

IndyMike,

 

No earthquake in this area. I suspect the station at 30' elevation is Sacramento Int'l Airport (KSMF) and the one at 121' is in Lincoln (KLHM). The data in your log tracks very well with what I've been seeing.

 

BTW, how do you set the ISY to log that data?

 

mike

Posted

Mike,

 

Glad to hear there's no shaking going on there. I have relatives, friends, and co-workers spread all along the fault lines.

 

I use the network module to log data to the ISY whenever there is a change in the weatherbug data. This comes in extremely handy for back-checking when things don't seem correct.

 

The file itself is a comma separated text file (.csv) that I download directly to Excel.

Posted

Do we understand what happens at 2/8 around 8pm - it is like rain is reset - but it does not happen the day after

 

Chris

 

Tim and Mike,

 

I switched my ISY to log data from KUAN. A partial listing of the log is shown below.

 

The yellow items are "anomalies":

1) Low temperature - should never increase during a given day

2) Light: Station suddenly began transmitting light data (more on this below).

3) Rain today: should never decrease during a given day.

4) Elevation - obviously should not change unless KAUN suddenly became mobile. Did I miss an earthquake in your area?

 

The issue is Weatherbug switching stations in an attempt to provide a continuous data stream. I do not know the conditions that cause the switch. I suspect the station at 130' elevation is McClellen AFB in Sacramento.

 

In short, I do not know how to prevent this other than finding a "very reliable station". Reliable is very misleading in this sense. The local airports in my area are not reliable in a Weatherbug sense. I believe they get overloaded with requests at some points and cause wetherbug to re-vector to an available station.

 

I wound up switching to a backyard station a mile up the road. It's not NWS certified, but weatherbug has not switched away from this station in over 8 months.

 

Note - times shown below are Eastern. Subtract 3 hours for your local time

 

Kaun.gif

Posted
Do we understand what happens at 2/8 around 8pm - it is like rain is reset - but it does not happen the day after

 

The rain didn't get reset - Weatherbug switched to another station that hadn't received any rain.

 

When Weatherbug switched back to station KAUN the rain tabulation continued normally (no loss of data after it returned).

 

As I explained, I do not know what causes Weatherbug to switch stations. I can say that when I use a local "backyard station", it does not switch.

Posted

I am referring to a later switch between 19:02 and 20:12. It seems rain count is reset - I normally assume that the rain count is reset @ midnight, but here it seems to be much earlier - thus I get wrong rain count

 

Am I missing something?

 

Chris

Posted
I am referring to a later switch between 19:02 and 20:12. It seems rain count is reset - I normally assume that the rain count is reset @ midnight, but here it seems to be much earlier - thus I get wrong rain count

 

Am I missing something?

 

Chris

 

Nope - I was. The times are my local times (Indiana-East). Somehow I made myself believe that the 20:12 reset was due to the midnight reset. Not even close.

 

Weatherunderground data from the same station shows rain continued through midnight.

 

Sorry, no good explanations from my end.

Posted

I don't have the Network module so that explains why I wasn't able to grab a similar table.

 

Incidentally, sometime this afternoon, after logging almost an inch of rain, WB is again showing 0 rainfall. If this continues then I might as well shut my irrigation programs down until soil moisture is down enough to call for irrigation again because if I allow them to run I'm going to be applying water in the midst of a pineapple express (local name for heavy warm rainfall coming in from the general direction of Hawaii).

 

IndiMike, do you have more information on that weather station you have mentioned?

 

mike

Posted

I don not know what is causing the dropouts, but they appear to be occurring at a specific time.

 

For the last 3 days Weatherbug has been dropping the KAUN precipitation to 0 around 16:00 Pacific Time. The same KAUN feed on Weatherunderground is intact.

post-202-140474162771_thumb.gif

Posted

That graph tracks my experience pretty well. Needless to say it negates use of the Irrigation module completely, least until the rainy season has passed. Now about that backyard station you mentioned... I'm not adverse to buying something like that as long I can be certain that it will communicate with the ISY seamlessly.

 

Obviously I would prefer a solution using my own moisture sensors reporting to the ISY but that doesn't seem to be in the immediate future.

 

mike

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

This afternoon just before I left the house at 3:55pm KAUN was showing a total of 0.65" of rain. When I returned at 9:55pm KAUN was showing a total of 0" of rain.

 

Evidently WB does not intend to allow devices to collect a complete day's rainfall data, at least from any of the stations in my area, which basically means that the irrigation module is useless until after the rainy season is over, becoming useful in areas such as mine where there are extended periods without rainfall while being marginal to useless in areas that have measurable rainfall throughout the year.

 

Michel: evidently I've not been searching properly because I sure can't find any particulars on battery powered Z-wave moisture sensors. Any suggestions?

 

mike

Posted

Michel: I won't be requesting a refund. The system is useful for most of the year where I am and only fails when we have significant rain. I'm just frustrated that WB evidently decided to contaminate their data.

 

lmike

Posted
Michel: I won't be requesting a refund. The system is useful for most of the year where I am and only fails when we have significant rain. I'm just frustrated that WB evidently decided to contaminate their data.

 

lmike

 

Mike,

 

Weatherbug appears to be having problems with data from the Airport stations. The feeds from the local Schools and backyard stations (still verifying) appears good.

 

Please try switching to a School in your area.

 

I'll post some data this weekend.

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