rain no show on cumulus

[ottocold]

hiya

i have a W-8681 which shows 38.4mm of rain today but cumulus shows zero. all other displays on cumulus tally with the W-8681. any ideas?

[steve]

How long have you been running Cumulus? Has it always shown rain correctly before? Do you run Cumulus 24/7 or do you stop it and start it?

[ottocold]

Been running cumulus for about 7 months. the rain gauge got jammed earlier in july which turned out to be a spiders web but we haven't had any rain for ages so not aware how long it'ds been out. i have just noticed that the display on the w-8681 for rain for 24hrs has gone to zero so god knows what's happening. if i have ever had a problem it's always been the rain. one day we had 27 metres according to cumulus!

[steve]

Rain is always a problem, because the station only supplies a 'total counter', and Cumulus has to work out everything from that. Occasionally the total counter goes haywire, resulting in very weird things happening in Cumulus. If you upload your Oct09log.txt file, I can see what's been happening to the counter.

[ottocold]

hi steve


october file as requested

[steve]

Your rain counter went to 3477.9 at 18:11 on 3rd October, and stayed there until 14:32 this afternoon. So, at the time you posted, according to your station, you had indeed had no rain today. You would have noticed if you'd had 38.4 mm by 10 am, surely? I assumed you knew it had actually been raining?

The latest value of the counter, as at 1609, is 3528, so you've had 50.1 mm since 14:32 - quite a lot in 90 minutes - do the actual conditions confirm that? I suspect not; according to the station, at one point (around 15:24) you had 10 mm in one minute!

[ottocold]

as i thought , it's all to cock as they say. we have had light rain/ drizzle on and off today no more than 10mm in all i suspect.
guess i shall just have to ignore rain figs with my gear. i mainly bought it for the wind speed as we do live in a very exposed area which clocked 40mph on saturday which was high by south midlands averages.

thanks for your input, much appreciated

[steve]

I looked at your wind speeds to see if perhaps the wind could have been making the gauge tip, but your speeds don't look particularly high. I know that these gauges are very sensitive to wind; mine often shows rain when it's dry but windy, and it's firmly attached to the side of my stevenson screen. I never have that problem with my Davis.