Cumulus Support

I'm using an Ambient Weather AWS-1080 on my roof in Chicago and frequently experience strong winds in both on average and gusts. If the winds are gusting over 35-40MPH this seems to trigger the rain sensor to think it's raining (for example, it did not rain 42" this day: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstat ... &year=2012 ). I've been told it might be pole vibration but it seems stable to me and I don't know if it's that or the sensor getting blown by the gusts even minimally. Regardless, short of replacing the station I don't think I'm going to resolve that aspect at the hardware level.

I'm most interested in keeping my data on Weather Underground accurate. Is there a way to set up rules so that if the wind gusts are over say 35 MPH, the rain sensor is temporarily ignored? It's very rare that it would be both raining and gusting to 50 MPH anyway, usually the winds come just before the actual precipitation or at other unrelated times.

Also, is there a way to stop uploading the data if the sensor data is obviously stale? I've come across it uploading the same exact data for 24+ hours on a few occasions. I think at this point Weather Underground removed me from the search results over that this weekend over that. I believe right now if the sensor loses contact and doesn't get an update, the software just keeps uploading the data as if it were current. You would think Weather Underground had processes built in to not show the data as updated, but I've witnessed it at least a few times where it was uploading stale data for over a day and the site didn't seem to notice. I presume it took a manual data flag from someone to have them look into it and/or pull it from the results.

DaneKan wrote:I don't know if it's that or the sensor getting blown by the gusts even minimally. Regardless, short of replacing the station I don't think I'm going to resolve that aspect at the hardware level.

A number of people have had problems with the wind tipping the rain gauge, and have fixed it by modifying the rain gauge; you may be able to find a solution in the Fine Offset part of the forum, or someone may see this post and offer advice.

Is there a way to set up rules so that if the wind gusts are over say 35 MPH, the rain sensor is temporarily ignored?

You would need to write your own script to upload to WU (the protocol isn't complicated) and put your own rules in.

Also, is there a way to stop uploading the data if the sensor data is obviously stale?

Again, you'd need to come up with your own solution, using the <#SensorContactLost>. But you really need to fix the root cause of the problem if your station is losing contact for over 24 hours at a time.