Historical Data

[ramsded]

I have been trying to input historical data into Cumulus without success.

The data has been converted into what I understand Cumulus needs with a sample being as follows:
01/03/13 00:15 5 100 5 2 4 NNW 0 0 1030.5 0 20.2 40 0 4.9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Each months worth of data has then been saved as a tab delimited text file, but when I try to view within Cumulus, nothing.

I would appreciate any guidance.

[mcrossley]

The Cumulus monthly files are space comma delimited rather than tab.

Sorry, I'd just been looking at the realtime.txt file - different beast, different format!

[steve]

I'm confused. The Cumulus data log files are actually comma separated. But what file format is that example supposed to represent?

Edit: I think I understand now, the "NNW" threw me; it has to be a number. But the file has to be comma separated.

[ramsded]

Apologies but I'm confused as well now.

I am converting the data within Excel and then saving the result, but if I select a CSV file I get a csv extension to the file name, as I understand from Cumulus help it needs to have a txt extension ?

If the wind direction has to be numerical is this degree based ie south = 180 and I would like to save the data in another folder not on the 'c' drive is this possible.

Dave

[steve]

I am converting the data within Excel and then saving the result, but if I select a CSV file I get a csv extension to the file name, as I understand from Cumulus help it needs to have a txt extension ?

The files have to have the format that Cumulus expects, so yes, they have to have a .txt extension. If Excel won't let you save them like that, can you not just rename them?

If the wind direction has to be numerical is this degree based ie south = 180

Yes

and I would like to save the data in another folder not on the 'c' drive is this possible.

For Cumulus to use them, files have to be in the data folder in the Cumulus installation folder.

[ramsded]

The monthly file is now being saved as eg Mar13log.txt within the data folder and is in the format as below:

01/03/13,00:15,5,100,5,2,4,337.5,0,0,1030.5,0,20.2,40,0,4.9,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
01/03/13,00:30,5,100,5,2,6,337.5,0,0,1030.4,0,20.1,40,0,4.9,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0

This data is still not viewable, for info this months worth of data is the only data within the programme as it is presently not downloading any data directly so no day files or other files exist.

Any further thoughts appreciated.

Dave

[steve]

This data is still not viewable

If the log file viewer can't load the file, there's probably an issue with the file. What happens when you try to view it? If you want to zip up the file and attach it here, I'll see if I can see what the problem is.

no day files or other files exist.

Once you've sorted out the issue with the monthly log file, you'll need to use the dayfile editor to create the entries in dayfile.txt, and then use the various other editors in Cumulus to semi-automatically populate the various high/low data.

[ramsded]

Having run the dayfile editor the data is now selectable and visible, although I have some funny values ie it is adding a days weather to the previous days giving a monthly total of 933 rather than 57, maybe I have inserted the data in the wrong column.

I am now checking to see that I can see data with all the options, one initially missing is all time highs and lows.

Thanks for your help.

Dave

[ramsded]

Forgot before, but attached should be a months zipped data file.

Dave

[steve]

Wind bearing should be a whole number. And you've put a cumulative rain figure in the 'rain so far today' column; it has to reset to zero at the end of the day.

[ramsded]

Regards rainfall, the data I have is rainfall for each period recorded ( every 15 mins ), please can you advise which column this should be input to and what the other 2 rainfall columns are expecting.

Dave

[steve]

There isn't a column for rain for each entry. Numbering from zero, as in the wiki, the three rain columns are:

08: Current rainfall rate - hopefully obvious
09: Total rainfall today so far - cumulative rainfall for the day (i.e. resets at midnight)
11: Total rainfall counter - what this holds is dependent on the type of station. It's typically the counter from the rain gauge itself, which just keeps incrementing, but may be reset at some point, e.g. year end (so it could be the annual rain counter, for example). This is the figure which, when running for real, Cumulus uses to calculate all of the rain figures.

So my guess would be that the figure you were putting in column 9 is actually what you want in column 11.