WS-2080 All Time Records went crazy today

[aznetcowboy]

This morning I noticed that some (not all) of my all-time records were off the chart. This is on my WS-2080 using Cumulus 1.9.2 (build 1032). The high wind speed all of a sudden was 759.2 MPH and the high temperature at 385.1 degrees while the low was minus 159.8. Based on last night's readings when I went to bed and this morning readings I made some adjustments to the All-Time Records file. The lowest the temperature has been since I set this on on 01/02/2013 was 17 degrees and the highest wind was 25 (gusts up to the 30s range). These should be close, but maybe not exact. The low, however there was not doubt about as it was officially according to the US Weather Dept. the lowest all-time temperature for the date here in Tucson.

Anyway, the question I have is does anyone have any ideas what may have caused this problem? I do not leave my computer on at night. It is generally turned off at about 10:30 PM and back on around 8:30 AM. Any suggestions? I personally can't think of any reason the file should have been corrupted.

[steve]

This doesn't sound like the usual 'spikes' that Fine Offset stations produce, because in addition to the 'spike removal' settings, Cumulus filters out obviously wrong readings (e.g. temperatures over about 150F). So it does look like a file corruption. Note that Cumulus saves the alltime.ini file in one of the backup folders every time it starts up (and at midnight in 1.9.3), so you could retrieve a copy from there.

[aznetcowboy]

Steve,

Thank you for the feedback.

My estimates on the records were very close. Within a short time most will be over-written by more extreme weather as normally happens in the desert, except for the low temperature that is. At least now I know where to get data if this ever happens again.

Tom

[steve]

At least now I know where to get data if this ever happens again.

But note that although the folder is called 'backup', it is not intended to be a substitute for your own regular backups.