Wunderground reporting "missing wind data"

[Denny Page]

Has anyone else noticed that Underground is now showing a dashed circle ("missing wind data") when no wind is reported by Weewx? Is it a bug in Wunderground's API, or are they now expecting an explicit report of 0 when there is no wind?

[Andrew Milner]

Well they are reporting zero still anyway - since I got this from November 6th, so there does not appear to be a bug:

[Denny Page]

Andrew, are you using RapidFire?

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<windCapture.JPG>

[Andrew Milner]

Nope - just reporting every 5 minutes.  Don't really see the point in rapid fire - especially as my station only updates every 48 seconds anyway!  Do not fully understand how WU distinguishes as I have on occasion seen it saying that I am using RapidFire - when I'm not!!

Andrew

[Ken Nachtman]

Same thing here Andrew, I'm reported as using rapid fire, and I do not have that feature turned on.

Also, within the last two days my station is shown to have no wind reported, by a dashed circle around my temp reading, in the evening when there is no wind here.

A station across the river from me doesn't have the broken circle, even though his anemometer is broke. 

Go figure...

[Josiah]

I use Rapid Fire and have this issue sometimes.

Josiah

[Phil Homewood]

Oldish thread, but yes, I'm seeing this too. No rapid-fire updates enabled. Only started noticing it recently.

[Phil Homewood]

I've been fiddling with this and have discovered a couple of things:-

1. WU complains of missing data when we don't send windDir. Which... we don't, when wind == 0, as it's meaningless (None, NULL.)

2. We never (at least in 2.5.0) send windGustDir to WU at all. This appears to be an oversight.

I've (locally) fixed #2, and hacked the fousb driver to store windDir even when wind == 0. This feels like a nasty kluge, if WU really really wants a windDir even when it's calm, we should probably put the kluge into restful.py, not store questionable values in the DB. Or get them to fix this silly requirement (?)

Running with this hack in place overnight, we'll see what WU and the weewx graphs look like in the morning....

[Thomas Keffer]

Let me know the results. 

Can someone send me an example of this situation? Personally, I've never seen it. Here's what it looks like for my station (KORHOODR3) when wind speed is zero --- null values, just as you'd expect.

Admittedly, I live in a very windy area (Columbia River Gorge), so calm days are rare, but yesterday was one.

-tk

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[Phil Homewood]

Results look fine. http://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=IQUEENSL369#history

I actually think my anemometer might be a little sticky. Cheap Fine Offset station. But regardless, WU now doesn't complain I'm missing data when it's calm.

It's only the instantaneous readings that it complains about -- e.g., on WunderMap, the station will have a dotted circle and the text "station is missing some wind data".

Really, I can't see this as anything other than a bug on the WU end. While what I've hacked up works, it's wrong, and I don't believe we should be recording and reporting bogus values just because WU thinks that zero needs a direction.

[Phil Homewood]

FYI, I've backed out my workaround for this. I've decided that I'd rather occasionally see a gripe on the WunderMap than have weird directions-of-calm showing in historical graphs.

I also went and unstuck my anemometer. Cheap bearings... I suspect many of my zero readings (amongst others) are low,  hopefully I'll see this less often from now on...

In testing, I've also determined that WU will accept greater precision in windspeed than the %03.0f we're sending. I'm running with %03.2f now, though in practice they're rounding it to one decimal place. Still, better to send them too much precision than not enough. :-)

--- restful.py.orig     2015-02-19 19:23:21.000000000 +1000

+++ restful.py  2015-02-22 20:41:11.000000000 +1000

@@ -123,9 +123,10 @@

                 'barometer'   : 'baromin=%.3f',

                 'outTemp'     : 'tempf=%.1f',

                 'outHumidity' : 'humidity=%03.0f',

-                'windSpeed'   : 'windspeedmph=%03.0f',

+                'windSpeed'   : 'windspeedmph=%03.2f',

                 'windDir'     : 'winddir=%03.0f',

-                'windGust'    : 'windgustmph=%03.0f',

+                'windGust'    : 'windgustmph=%03.2f',

+                'windGustDir' : 'windgustdir=%03.0f',

                 'dewpoint'    : 'dewptf=%.1f',

                 'hourRain'    : 'rainin=%.2f',

                 'dayRain'     : 'dailyrainin=%.2f',

[Phil Homewood]

wow, sorry about that diff. that did not paste nicely.

[Thomas Keffer]

Sorry, but I can't help myself: You're running with sticky bearings and two decimal places of precision? 

-tk

[Phil Homewood]

Fair cop, guv'nor :-)

The bearings have been unstuck (bad placement on the shaft was the major issue) , and I'm keeping an eye on it... but the whole rig (or at least the bearings, if they still prove problematic) may well get replaced soon.

Meanwhile, my individual hardware problems notwithstanding, weewx should be updated to send at least one decimal place, since the station gives it, and WU accepts it.

[Thomas Keffer]

Changed to a single decimal point in d1edadd.

-tk

[pon...@gmail.com]

New weewx user here: I found this thread by searching for "missing wind data". I have not enabled rapidfire updates (no point with a WH1080) and see that this persists. I could see a potentially useful distinction between nil/no value and 0: the former for "my anemometer has been struck by lightning" (or similar) and the latter for "no wind", but also concede that the former is not a wind speed. I wonder what was being reported for the broken anemometer mentioned below that didn't show as being missing wind data? Presumably weewx wasn't involved.

[Joe Dearborn]

I started going over this thread about a month ago when I switched from an Oregon Scientific WMR968 to a Ambient WS2095 (the OS unit failed after five years of very reliable service).  I had noticed a similar phenomenon with the previous unit but I only had to add value to the windspeed to get it to recognize wind values in a calm.  With the new one I had to add both windspeed and winddir.  If I don't add either I get the dotted lines and WU takes my station out of the top tier of stations reporting.  For windspeed I found that merely adding .01 to the speed value is sufficient.  I think in the processing of that incremented value the increment is rounded off so I'm presuming no harm there.  I did try setting the value equal to zero but that wasn't sufficient either.

For the winddir I landed on 182 which is a real value but not one that the normal process would generate.  When I don't assign a value and it is calm WU records 9999 for winddir.  I figure in computing the vector there is no harm as the zero speed will zero out the vector.  For other recordings I share the concern that I am recording inaccurate direction.  I was considering pulling a sorta random digit out so that at least my erroneous direction would be arbitrarily rotating around the compass.  If I just let it record the 9999 value then it appears that my station is not collecting wind data.  Has anyone come up with anything more on this issue?

joe verreau

[W.C. Hast]

I am assuming nothing has been done about this. I live in an area where I have a lot of calm, so my WU shows a lot of broken lines. This to me is a WU fail, I am sending legitimate data zero wind @ zero direction. Any more comments or live with it?

[Thomas Keffer]

I'm afraid you are going to have to live with it. If weewx reports zero wind speed and the WU decides to interpret that as missing data, well... I don't know what we can do about that.

You could do what Joe does and make sure wind speed is always at least 0.01. If you do that, do it by modifying restx.py, not by using the StdCalibrate service (which would change the values put in the database).

Could you perhaps give your WU station ID? I'd like to see what this looks like. My station never does this.

-tk

On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 3:44 PM, W.C. Hast <wch...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am assuming nothing has been done about this.  I live in an area where I have a lot of calm, so my WU shows a lot of broken lines.  This to me is a WU fail,  I am sending legitimate data zero  wind @ zero direction. Any more comments or live with it?

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[Denny Page]

Thomas, it isn’t that weewx reports a wind speed of zero. WU accepts (and expects) that. The issue is that weewx suppresses reporting the vane position when wind speed is zero. If the vane position is not present in the data, WU believes that the station does not support wind.

I believe that the correct behavior is that if the physical station reports the vane position, it should be conveyed through to WU. This would match the behavior of other software, and is what WU expects.

W.C., for the Vantage, the fix is trivial. Just comment out or delete the lines that remove windDir from the report.

*** vantage.py.org      Sun Mar 13 18:00:27 2016

--- vantage.py  Thu May 12 10:47:58 2016

***************

*** 1311,1318 ****

                  loop_packet[_type] = func(raw_loop_packet[_type])

  

          # Wind direction is undefined if wind speed is zero:

!         if loop_packet['windSpeed'] == 0:

!             loop_packet['windDir'] = None

              

          # Adjust sunrise and sunset:

          start_of_day = weeutil.weeutil.startOfDay(loop_packet['dateTime'])

--- 1311,1318 ----

                  loop_packet[_type] = func(raw_loop_packet[_type])

  

          # Wind direction is undefined if wind speed is zero:

!         #if loop_packet['windSpeed'] == 0:

!         #    loop_packet['windDir'] = None

              

          # Adjust sunrise and sunset:

          start_of_day = weeutil.weeutil.startOfDay(loop_packet['dateTime'])

Denny

[Thomas Keffer]

OK, that's a different problem, one that is easily solved. Just set option ignore_zero_wind to false. 

But, I do wonder why I never see this error. Today is a good example. We had an inversion, so the wind was calm all day long, with lots of zeros and lots of null wind directions, yet, WU accepted them all.

I wonder if they have multiple servers, each running a different version of their software?

-tk

[Denny Page]

I haven’t checked 3.6, but in 3.5 setting ignore_zero_wind didn’t fix a Vantage with rapidfire updates. It seemed to be a “known” issue at the time, but I haven’t seen anything in the release notes about it.

I’ll check 3.6.X as soon as I have a chance.

Thanks,

Denny

[Denny Page]

A moment presented itself. It does appear that this is fixed in 3.6.2. I’ll have to double check tomorrow when wind comes and goes, but it looks good right now when everything is completely calm.

Thank you so much for fixing this. Greatly appreciated.

Denny

[Paul Weber]

Hi, I'm a newb here.  I installed weewx 3.6.2 yesterday and am very pleased with my success however I am experiencing this problem as well. (dotted lines on WU map indicating lack of data)  Also my weewx out put says 0 m/s from N/A (N/A)  My site is ILOGONEO2.  I made the change in my config to      ignore_zero_wind = false     as suggested and there is no change.  I am using a WMR100NA weather station.

Also my station does not appear on weewx map either even though I have set publish = true

[Thomas Keffer]

Did you restart weewx after changing weewx.conf?

-tk

​

[Paul Weber]

Yes I stop it before editing then restart it.

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[Thomas Keffer]

​Edit weewx.conf, setting debug=1, then restart weewx. Post the system log from weewx startup through the first archive record --- usually 15 minutes or so is long enough.​

-tk

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[Paul Weber]

Not sure if this is what you want.  I did notice however that my insert of "ignore_zero_wind" is at the beginning of the list and not at the end so may be getting canceled?  Anyway if this is not what you want let me know.  Thanks for your help.

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.engine.StdTimeSynch

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.engine.StdTimeSynch

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.engine.StdConvert

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: StdConvert target unit is 0x1

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.engine.StdConvert

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.engine.StdCalibrate

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.engine.StdCalibrate

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.engine.StdQC

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.engine.StdQC

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.wxservices.StdWXCalculate

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: wxcalculate: The following values will be calculated: barometer=prefer_hardware, windchill=prefer_hardware, dewpoint=prefer_hardware, appTemp=prefer_hardware, rainRate=hardware, windrun=prefer_hardware, heatindex=prefer_hardware, maxSolarRad=prefer_hardware, humidex=prefer_hardware, pressure=prefer_hardware, inDewpoint=prefer_hardware, ET=prefer_hardware, altimeter=prefer_hardware, cloudbase=prefer_hardware

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: wxcalculate: The following algorithms will be used for calculations: altimeter=aaNOAA, maxSolarRad=RS

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.wxservices.StdWXCalculate

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.engine.StdArchive

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Archive will use data binding wx_binding

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Record generation will be attempted in 'hardware'

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Using archive interval of 300 seconds (specified in weewx configuration)

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Use LOOP data in hi/low calculations: 1

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Using binding 'wx_binding' to database 'weewx.sdb'

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: manager: Starting backfill of daily summaries

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: manager: Daily summaries up to date

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.engine.StdArchive

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.restx.StdStationRegistry

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: restx: StationRegistry: Station will not be registered: no station_url specified.

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.restx.StdStationRegistry

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.restx.StdWunderground

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: restx: Wunderground-PWS: Data for station ILOGONEO2 will be posted

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.restx.StdWunderground

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.restx.StdPWSweather

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: restx: PWSweather: Posting not enabled.

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.restx.StdPWSweather

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.restx.StdCWOP

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: restx: CWOP: Posting not enabled.

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.restx.StdCWOP

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.restx.StdWOW

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: restx: WOW: Posting not enabled.

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.restx.StdWOW

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.restx.StdAWEKAS

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: restx: AWEKAS: Posting not enabled.

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.restx.StdAWEKAS

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.engine.StdPrint

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.engine.StdPrint

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Loading service weewx.engine.StdReport

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Finished loading service weewx.engine.StdReport

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Starting up weewx version 3.6.2

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Station does not support reading the time

Nov 16 20:30:50 Mobil-1 weewx[8411]: engine: Starting main packet loop.

[Thomas Keffer]

It should look something like this when you're done.

[StdWXCalculate]

    ignore_zero_wind = false

    [[Calculations]]

    # Derived quantities are calculated by this service. Possible values are:

    #  hardware        - use the value provided by hardware

    #  software        - use the value calculated by weewx

    #  prefer_hardware - use value provide by hardware if available,

    #                      otherwise use value calculated by weewx

    

        pressure = prefer_hardware

        barometer = prefer_hardware

        altimeter = prefer_hardware

        windchill = prefer_hardware

        heatindex = prefer_hardware

        dewpoint = prefer_hardware

        inDewpoint = prefer_hardware

        rainRate = prefer_hardware

If that doesn't solve the problem, then we need to see more of the log. You only included one second's worth. We need at least an archive period (generally 5 to 10 minutes).

-tk

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[Paul Weber]

Thanks that did it :D  I had it below in the section with "perfer_hardware" etc.  Much appreciated 

[Erik Berg]

This works for me, except on my WMR100 it defaults to East when there is no wind.  Is there any way that it could keep reporting the last wind direction?

Erik

[Andrew Milner]

Just out of curiosity which way does your vane point when there is no wind??  If the vane is slightly off balance/true it could well be biased to point east under no wind conditions!!

[Erik Berg]

It stays in the direction of the last wind.  If the wind was from the North, it will stay pointing North, but when the station reports no wind it sends that it's zero from the East (even though it's physically pointing North.

[sina...@gmail.com]

Hey, I bought wmr300A but it doenst show wind direction and wind. It shows only wind gust, how can I solve this problem?

8 Kasım 2014 Cumartesi 04:39:42 UTC+3 tarihinde Denny Page yazdı:

[Thomas Keffer]

What is "it?" The weather underground? Your console?  Weewx?

How about an example?

-tk

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[sina...@gmail.com]

Yes weatherunderground. I am using lubuntu on orange pi pc. Used sudo commands to install weewx but WU does not show wind and wind direction, only wind gust.

[sina...@gmail.com]

My console shows correct everything, only wunderground

[Thomas Keffer]

We're going to need more information than what you've provided.

What kind of weather station?

Are you using Rapidfire?

Please set debug=1, then restart weewx, then post the log from startup through the first record generation.

Which Weather Underground station?

-tk

On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 7:54 AM, <sina...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes weatherunderground. I am using lubuntu on orange pi pc. Used sudo commands to install weewx but WU does not show wind and wind direction, only wind gust.

[sina...@gmail.com]

I have oregon wmr300A, yes im using rapidfire. You can check my data on wu, id is IATALCA3. Also I will debug data and post here

[Thomas Keffer]

In that case, set debug=2 (instead of debug=1), restart weewx, post the first few log records. This will show exactly what it is sending to the Weather Underground.

I suspect  the problem is Rapidfire: it does not work very well, especially with "partial record" stations like the WMR300.

-tk

On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 8:37 AM, <sina...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have oregon wmr300A, yes im using rapidfire. You can check my data on wu, id is IATALCA3. Also I will debug data and post here

[sina...@gmail.com]

where can I find debug logs?
4 Kasım 2017 Cumartesi 18:59:18 UTC+3 tarihinde Tom Keffer yazdı:

In that case, set debug=2 (instead of debug=1), restart weewx, post the first few log records. This will show exactly what it is sending to the Weather Underground.

I suspect  the problem is Rapidfire: it does not work very well, especially with "partial record" stations like the WMR300.

-tk

On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 8:37 AM, <sina...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have oregon wmr300A, yes im using rapidfire. You can check my data on wu, id is IATALCA3. Also I will debug data and post here

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[Andrew Milner]

in the ordinary weewx log file

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[sina...@gmail.com]

no log file on /etc/weewx/

4 Kasım 2017 Cumartesi 21:14:06 UTC+3 tarihinde Andrew Milner yazdı:

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[sina...@gmail.com]

The problem is Wu updates wind and wind direction every 5 minute but cant say for wind gust because it does rapidfire correctly. Still I cannot find debug file, i am newbie of linux

[gjr80]

Hi,

Logs should be in /var/log, most likely /var/log/syslog unless you you have changed it.

Gary