Longest dry period discrepancy

[CaptJack]

Hi. I'm fairly new to Cumulus having only been using it since November 2015. I moved to it from WeatherLink because I found it more 'user-friendly', more information available about its workings and generally an all round better package.

I did search the forum before registering and logging in but couldn't find the answer to my questions (hopefully I didn't miss them).

This month record (thismonth.htm) shows the longest dry period as 0 days to 01 January
This year record (thisyear.htm) shows the longest dry period as 0 days to 01 January

But the monthly record (monthlyrecord.htm) shows --- days ----

Two questions:
1. Why doesn't the 'monthly record' show the same data as 'this month'?
2. Why isn't the dry period calculated up to at least the previous day (longest wet period shows 13 days to 10 January)?

I haven't changed any of the webtags in the templates for these pages.

Thank you
Peter

[steve]

1. Why doesn't the 'monthly record' show the same data as 'this month'?

They're all showing the same thing - that you haven't had a dry period yet this month or this year (it's rained every day so far). Just displaying it slightly differently.

2. Why isn't the dry period calculated up to at least the previous day (longest wet period shows 13 days to 10 January)?

Sorry, I don't understand the question. What dry period so you think it should be showing, given that you've had rain every day this year so far?

[CaptJack]

Hi Steve
I realise that we haven't had a dry period this month/year so far but the 0 days shown in thismonth and thisyear give the date to 01 January which is only one day whereas I'd have thought the date for this month/year should be shown as at least the previous day (10 January for today the 11th) as it does for the longest wet period. So longest dry period would show as 0 days 10 January.

Also I couldn't understand why the longest dry period in monthlyrecords for January shows as --- and ---- for value and date respectively and why it doesn't show the same as thismonth. I'd have thought that thismonth data and monthlyrecord data for January would be the same although I appreciate that different webtags are used.

Or is there something going on that I haven't grasped yet? I do have some screen snippets of these areas which I can send if that would help.

[steve]

They are all saying that you have no dry period yet. It's not "one day", it's zero days, hence the date is irrelevant. They just happen to display that fact in different ways because the 'this month' and 'this year' items got reset at the start of this month, hence the date of January 1st. The monthly record is still at the initial setting as it hasn't been set at all yet.

[steve]

If it helps - the dates for the 'this month' and the 'this year' items could show dashes or whatever, to indicate "no date", as the day count is zero. But they don't, as I didn't write them that way. I've been adding code to Cumulus for around 12 years now, and I'm not always consistent. A bit of javascript could check for zero days and output dashes instead.

[CaptJack]

I see what you are saying but if I was someone from outside the UK (I've also had a UK friend query this, hence my post), I could see that there have been 0 dry days up to 01 January (for the year and month) but I would also want to know if there have been any dry days since then up to the current/previous day.

I know it could be argued that if there have been 13 wet days up to 10 January then logically there has also been 0 dry days up to 10 January. I just don't see why the dry day date isn't up to the previous day even if it means that essentially it is stating the obvious.

With regards to the dashes. Personally I find them a bit confusing but I know what you mean about inconsistent software creation. I've been writing software since the late 70's and I still don't always write similar code the same way.

[steve]

I see what you are saying but if I was someone from outside the UK (I've also had a UK friend query this, hence my post), I could see that there have been 0 dry days up to 01 January (for the year and month) but I would also want to know if there have been any dry days since then up to the current/previous day.

If there had been any dry days since 1st January, that would show up as an actual spell of one or more days, so it would be clear that there had been one or more dry days since 1st January. The fact that the longest dry spell for January is zero length tells you immediately that there have been zero dry days in January.

I know it could be argued that if there have been 13 wet days up to 10 January then logically there has also been 0 dry days up to 10 January. I just don't see why the dry day date isn't up to the previous day even if it means that essentially it is stating the obvious.

The date shows the last day of the spell, for both wet spells and dry spells. Showing 10th January for the dry spell, would be wrong as that would imply that 10th January was a dry day, when it was not. The same argument could be applied to the 1st January date that is showing, and as I have agreed, it could show dashes for that date instead.

I'm sorry that you don't like the way this works, but I'm afraid I don't propose to change it (although I might change that January 1st in the case of a zero-length spell to dashes in Cumulus MX). If you want the information displayed in some other way, you could modify the web page to do that, using javascript or whatever.

[CaptJack]

Hi Steve
That's fair enough. I realise you can't please all the people all the time but thanks for taking the time to look at it and explain things.
Regards