Cumulus Support

Hi,

The strong winds yesterday gave me wrong rain fall readings. I have amended the day file and February's file as per the instructions on the wiki, plus altered February's .ini file. Since doing this I do not get most of the graphs, no data by month (Jan / Feb) and the total rianfall for the year is not correct Jan = 32.4mm and Feb to date = 20.5mm).

Can anyone let me know what I have done wrong. I updated the files by bringing them into excel and saving out as a text file.

Regards

Hugh

HughCallaway wrote:Can anyone let me know what I have done wrong. I updated the files by bringing them into excel and saving out as a text file.

That may be the reason Hugh. Without wishing to disparage your Excel skills the formatting of the files may have been altered resulting in these errors.

It might help if you upload Feb11log.txt and let Steve see what it looks like.

I concur with Ray; Cumulus is probably no longer able to recognise the format of your files, almost certainly due to Excel changing the date formatting.

Thanks for the replies. I've attached one of files. Can you let me know how I change it to the right format.

You've saved it as tab-separated instead of comma-separated, and the dates are now in the format dd/mm/yyyy instead of dd/mm/yy.

I've attached a fixed copy. Basically, it needed a global replace from "/2011" to "/11" and from tab to comma.

Your dayfile.txt will probably need similar treatment if you've done the same to that.

Ouch! As I suspected the text file has not been saved as a comma-delimited file. Comapre most of the entries to the last two which are in the correct format.

Steve may know of a better / quicker way of getting that file in its correct state. Once it is I suggest you use Cumulus's own record editing facility to make any changes.

You need to establish why yesterday's strong winds affected your rainfall readings. Is your station quite high up and not secure against high winds causing the rainfall tipping mechanism to move?

Thanks Steve for fixing the file I supplied. How do I go about getting the dayfile as a comma seperated file. If I save it in excel as a csv file I still do not get the right readings. I probably need to check January's file as well.

The rain guage is in a farly open area, on a pole.

HughCallaway wrote:Thanks Steve for fixing the file I supplied. How do I go about getting the dayfile as a comma seperated file. If I save it in excel as a csv file I still do not get the right readings. I probably need to check January's file as well.

Open it with Notepad and edit by hand would be my recommendation. It's updated at midnight so you have plenty of time to ensure the last couple of days records are in the same format as earlier ones.

HughCallaway wrote:The rain guage is in a farly open area, on a pole.

If the station is at the top of the pole it may need the pole sinking further into the ground to reduce wind movement. You don't want these problems every time we get windy weather. Alternatively, move the station down the pole.

I've now managed to save it in the right format and success.....Thanks for the help.

HughCallaway wrote:I've now managed to save it in the right format and success.....Thanks for the help.

Well done! Keep away from Excel though.

I used notepad++, and just did a global replace of "/2011" to "/11" and then turned on 'extended' characters and did a global replace of "\t" (tab) to "," (comma).

I'm going to lower it and possibly look for another location.
Thanks

I had the same problem with my Fine Offset during the storm; vast quantities of non-existent rain recorded. My rain gauge is firmly secured, though, so the problem must have been caused by wind blowing through it, rather than it being shaken by the wind - you might want to bear this in mind. I think some people have done modifications to the rain gauge to try to remedy this problem.

steve wrote:I had the same problem with my Fine Offset during the storm; vast quantities of non-existent rain recorded. My rain gauge is firmly secured, though, so the problem must have been caused by wind blowing through it, rather than it being shaken by the wind - you might want to bear this in mind. I think some people have done modifications to the rain gauge to try to remedy this problem.

Hmm I had not thought about that, I had a;so strange rain (my raingauge is fitted well) have to do something with it , thanks.

hi guys.

you might have a look at CSVEdit http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/

Its free, easy to use and works well.