Rain Rate Issue with Weather Underground

[Travis Bully]

Hello All - 

I have a slight issue where my Weather Underground station is reporting "--" for Precip. Rate.

I'm running a Davis Envoy with the latest version of Weewx.  I'veverified that the rain rate is working from the sensor as I also have a Vantage Pro2 Console where it displays as expected.

Here's a link to my station:

http://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KMICANTO5#history

I've tried both "prefer_hardware" and "hardware" in my conf file.

If someone could provide me with troubleshooting pointers, I'd be grateful.

Thanks!

(attached my latest conf file)

[Thomas Keffer]

Hello, Travis

Weewx does not actually use rainRate for what it sends to the WU. Instead, it sums the amount of rain over the last hour, and sends that. 

So, let's see what's in the database. I'm assuming your time zone is EDT.

If you have not done so, first install the utility sqlite3:

sudo apt-get install sqlite3

Then run it against your sqlite database:

sqlite3 /var/lib/weewx/weewx.sdb

sqlite> select datetime(dateTime, 'unixepoch', 'localtime'), rain from archive where dateTime>= 1458100800 and dateTime <= 1458104400;

sqlite> .quit

If I've done the time zone math correctly, this will show all the rain values between midnight and 1am your time for today (3/16). Please post the results.

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[Travis Bully]

Hi Tom - 

Sorry for the delay - business travel this week - and thanks for the response.

The query did not produce any results.  Your query (at least the date portion) does look accurate to me.

Thoughts?

root@homeauto01:~# sqlite3 /var/lib/weewx/weewx.sdb

SQLite version 3.7.13 2012-06-11 02:05:22

Enter ".help" for instructions

Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"

sqlite> select datetime(dateTime, 'unixepoch', 'localtime'), rain from archive where dateTime>= 1458100800 and dateTime <= 1458104400;

sqlite> .quit

root@homeauto01:~#

[Thomas Keffer]

Hmmm, let's make sure we've got the right database. Try two things

ls -l /var/lib/weewx

and

sqlite3 /var/lib/weewx/weewx.sdb

sqlite> select count(dateTime) from archive where dateTime>=1458100800;

sqlite> .quit

-tk

[Travis Bully]

To close this issue, Tom helped me with a report generation problem at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/weewx-user/aZkbzURzdew

While the thread wasn't about "rain data", the issues were related.

I was not using a hardware logger but a direct connection to the Vantage Envoy.  Changing to "software" generation seemed to have helped.

Thanks.

[Thomas Keffer]

Hello, Terry

Again, weewx does not actually send rain rate to the WU. It sends the total amount of rain that fell during the last 60 minutes. WU then calculates rain rate from that using their magic formula. Apparently, in your case, their servers failed to calculate it at all.

I have learned from long experience not to go chasing problems with the WU servers. They are very unreliable and one could go crazy trying to work around their many limitations.

-tk

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Terry Hardie <tha...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Tom,

I'm having the same issue. I'm currently running on "software" mode, but whenever there is a heavy downpour, Wunderground goes to "---":

https://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/hdfForecast?query=-35.574%2C174.521&sp=IMARUANG2&MR=1

Here's a snippet from my DB:

sqlite> select dateTime, rainRate from archive;

...

1474730700|0.0

1474731000|0.0

1474731300|0.0

1474731600|0.0800000000000001

1474731900|0.12

1474732200|0.12

1474732500|0.0799999999999999

1474732800|0.12

1474733100|0.2

1474733400|0.24

1474737300|0.2

1474737600|0.2

1474737900|0.16

1474738200|0.12

1474738500|0.04

1474738800|0.0

1474739100|0.0

1474739400|0.0

root@OfficeAP-ac:/home/weewx# bin/weewxd --version

3.5.0

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[Andrew Milner]

I see you say this is after a heavy downpour.  Are you able to quantify the rainfall which occurs in the hour during which WU gives --???  Perhaps you are exceeding something they regard as a maximum level - in which case take it up with WU.  As Tom says 0 forget weewx rainrate - check the weewx rain column instead whilst you search for your problem (if there is one)  The rain column SHOULD contain the rainfall which occurred within the archive period - it should NOT be an hourly rainfall or any other form of accumulated/calculated rainfall.

[Terry Hardie]

Sorry for the deletion. I had posted a bad config.

Thanks for the answer.