at this zoom level every bar is half an hour, so if it rains at a rate of 30 mm/h for two bars, the accumulated amount should be close to 30 mm, but it isn’t. zooming in shows that the rate is more like 3mm/h. but zooming even further out still shows the bug.
edit: apparently this is no longer true do to a stupid change. See below.
Aren’t the bars just representative of the ordinal values: Light, Medium, heavy, etc?
I think the scale is supposed to be mm for the accumulated rain and the same numbers are used for the rate in mm/h (you have to pretend the /h part to be present), but any way it is inconsistent with the values shown when zooming in.
that was but is no more
However, as of about September 1, 2019 (depending on which app you’re using) the blue bar indicates the “descriptive” intensity of the rain (very light, light, moderate, heavy, very heavy, extreme).
What did we change the bars? Because so many people were confused by the “corresponding hourly rate for amount of rain collected in the time period shown” issue. The blue bars and green line now match what’s shown on the main UI: daily accumulation and relative rain intensity.
well that’s just a stupid change. Didn’t we buy a weather station because it was supposed to be very accurate?? sure, but we don’t get to see it because it is confusing for some people. The station could measure a rate of say 8.25 mm/hour but we prefer it to be clumped together with all possible values between 4 mm/h and 16 mm/h and call it heavy rain?? I don’t buy that. That just makes it less accurate but not less confusing.
could we please reverse this change?
1 Like
Apparently starting september 1st the graphs no longer show the blue bars with accurate rain rates in mm/h but values are binned together For example, all rates between 4mm/h and 16 mm/h will just show heavy rain. I don’t mind the descriptive rates, as long as we do get the exact values in the graph. Besides what is called heavy rain in one region might be just moderate in an other region.
Lets have a little poll:
- I prefer accurate rain rates in mm/h
- I prefer descriptive rain rates (light, heavy, etc)
0 voters
1 Like
Why not both? 
The grouping as a bars night for quick info and as a subinformation (small(er) below / beside / as vertical text inside the bar and light) the values?
@sunny : do you like to add a third option ?
I would like the precision back in the graph so the bars are precise and have all different height instead of only 5 possible values. That’s why there is no third option.
But adding the descriptive text can be done. In the graph it would be as simple as labeling the vertical axis with some wording so you could see that between 4 and 16 mm/h is considered as heavy rain. No need to write it in every bar. That would look a bit ugly. Or they could add the descriptive text to the info that appears when you put the yellow line somewhere.
In the panel view I don’t mind the descriptive text. I’m not against the text but I want the precision in the graph back.
1 Like
Indeed, if “some people” find it too difficult to read numbers (numbers as in the rain rate per hour or the quantity of rain so far for the day or the total amount of rain for the day/week/month/year) then people should not get a weather station - they should simply subscribe to an online weather service where every bit of weather information is provided as an icon/image … weather station are not for the ‘TL;DR’ generation! 
2 Likes
When my NWS SkyWarn weather contact calls me during a storm, he is expecting a rainfall report in inches per time unit, not something descriptive that cannot be used to help decide if local flooding may be building up.
4 Likes
This looks kind of unscientific anyway. Two times one bar of light rain ( our it could have been moderate or heavy rain, you can’t tell from this graph) the first bar accumulates to some rain and the second accumulates to almost nothing. 
1 Like
@sunny, how long was the duration? If one was 30-minutes and the other 30-seconds…
3 Likes
May to indicate this (time of duration) the width of the bar should be modified like w= z * f * t , z: zoom level, f : scaling factor, t: time…
This might be a general idea, independent of using rate values or description.
You might think so, but it is more complicated. As in reality when I zoom in it turns out to be a short period of heavier rain. The height of the bar increases.
(note that that is the expected behavior, it was like that when the bar showed the accurate values, which is probably the part that confused some people)
@dsfg sure that would work, but in that case you might as well make a normal graph instead of a bar graph. I might like that, as long as it is accurate.
Note that the two graphs would be strongly related as the accumulated graph is just the summed values of the rate times delta_t, where delta_t is the measurement period. Or the reverse, the rate is the graph that shows the slope {derivative) of the accumulated rain.
Is only able to represent two values(x/y-axes), here time of day and the rate of rain. My idea was to add a third dimension, the duration of the rate. One way to represent is the width of the bars, a second one, more confusing to read and to present, im my opinion, would be a 3D-x-y-z-coordinate system…
@dsfg I understand, but you will end up with bars that are often as small as the measurement interval. It start with a few seconds of very light rain, a few seconds of no rain, a few seconds of verylight rain, some period of light rain, perhaps a few seconds of moderate rain, well, you get the picture. That is what you would see when zoomed in. If you zoom out, the bars will get smaller until they become so small that you have to combine them together. And you end up with the same situation again. That’s why I mentioned that you might as well have a normal graph instead. (but even a normal graph would change appearances when zooming)
But I like you way of thinking and trying to come up with better graphing methods.
@anon84912554 @WFmarketing so, until now four out of five users prefer the more accurate rain rates. can we please get them back? After all the descriptive rates are just as confusing as they scale with zoom level as well. The only thing they add is being less precise, which hardly is an advantage for anyone.
1 Like
Indeed, I support @sunny at one hundred percent - the rain intensity should be describe in millimeter per hour as it is on most semi-professional and professional weather stations.
As we got some rain over the past days, I found the display of the vertical bars quite annoying and certainly not informative at all. The rain display should consist of two lines, one indicating the rain rate (or relative rain intensity) and the other line representing the amount of accumulated rain so far for the day (from 00:00 hour until 23:59 hour of the current day).
Thanks, guys. We’re listening. We will consider a change to the rain rate display as time allows. We’re working on a way to have your cake and eat it too! Stay tuned…
3 Likes