Longest Wet Period

[water01]

Steve I was wondering how Cumulus calculated the Longest Wet Period as I am puzzled as to why http://www.dmjsystems.co.uk/weather/thisyear.php is showing 22 days to the 4th January when http://www.dmjsystems.co.uk/weather/top10s.php (bottom of the list for Consecutive Wet Days) shows this year I have had a 26 day period up to the 7th November which beats it.

This is confirmed by the 1 month Daily Rain graph here http://www.dmjsystems.co.uk/weather/historicgraphs.php which shows rain of 0.01 and above from 13th October to 7th November.

I realise that both the Graphs and the Top 10 totals are taken from my MySQL database maintained from the Dayfile.txt file but does Cumulus do it some other way?

[steve]

It adjusts the current wet/dry spell figures at the end of each day according to whether the amount of rain that day was greater than or equal to the 'rain day threshold'. It then checks whether any monthly/yearly/alltime highs have been broken by the new figures and if so, adjusts them.

The default value for the rain day threshold when inches are in use is 0.01". Have you perhaps changed the threshold? Your current wet period is 6 days, according to your 'today' page.

The diags log for the period Oct 31/Nov 1 should show why it thought Oct 31 didn't count as a rain day, if you still have that file.

[water01]

To be honest I don't even know where the "rain day threshold" is let alone change it. Where do I check just in case I have!!

[steve]

In cumulus.ini, "RainDayThreshold" in the [Station] section. The default value is -1, which means use 0.2mm or 0.01in.

[water01]

Here is the diag file containing the end of October switch over.

[steve]

It got as far as 20 days up to the 1st:

02/11/2013 00:00:00.768 : === Day reset for 01/11/2013
02/11/2013 00:00:00.792 : Raintotal = 16.901575088501 Raindaystart = 16.8188972473145
02/11/2013 00:00:00.792 : Rainyesterday (calibrated) set to 0.0826778411865234
02/11/2013 00:00:00.792 : RainDayThreshold = -1
02/11/2013 00:00:00.792 : rdt1000=10 ry1000=83
02/11/2013 00:00:00.792 : Yesterday was a rain day
02/11/2013 00:00:00.792 : Consecutive rain days = 20

So it did count the 31st and the 1st as rain days, but then your station disappeared:

02/11/2013 15:20:35.694 : 15:20:35 EWUSB: HidControl Device Unplug
02/11/2013 15:20:35.694 : VID = 1941 PID = 8021
02/11/2013 15:20:35.694 : Error - station unplugged - check connections
02/11/2013 15:20:35.694 : EWUSB: HidControl Device Removal
02/11/2013 15:20:35.694 : VID = 1941 PID = 8021
02/11/2013 15:20:35.694 : Error - station removed - check connections
02/11/2013 15:20:36.050 : EWUSB: HidControl Device Removal
02/11/2013 15:20:36.050 : VID = 1941 PID = 8021
02/11/2013 15:20:36.050 : Error - station removed - check connections
02/11/2013 15:20:36.132 : EWUSB: HidControl Device Removal
02/11/2013 15:20:36.133 : VID = 1941 PID = 8021
02/11/2013 15:20:36.133 : Error - station removed - check connections
02/11/2013 15:20:36.133 : 15:20:36 EWUSB: HidControl Arrival
02/11/2013 15:20:36.133 : VID = 1941 PID = 8021
02/11/2013 15:20:36.211 : EWUSB: HidControl Device Removal
02/11/2013 15:20:36.211 : VID = 1941 PID = 8021
02/11/2013 15:20:36.211 : Error - station removed - check connections
02/11/2013 15:20:36.283 : EWUSB: HidControl Device Removal
02/11/2013 15:20:36.283 : VID = 1941 PID = 8021
02/11/2013 15:20:36.283 : Error - station removed - check connections
02/11/2013 15:20:54.047 : Closing Please Wait form
02/11/2013 15:20:54.047 : 15:20:54 Station not responding

And then Cumulus closed at 17:36, with the station still disconnected, so it appears that the count got reset after that, and is presumably related to the station misbehaving. That should be in a later diags file.

But whatever the cause, it's not because of the 'rain day threshold' setting, and you can correct the wet spell count by stopping Cumulus and editing today.ini.

[water01]

Thanks Steve. Edited today.ini, will this eventually ripple through to month and year etc. or do I have to edit those as well?

[steve]

As it's rained today, the count will be incremented at midnight and everything else will then automatically get updated.

[water01]

Thanks.