Question for you guys i recently bought a new 26 tempest and will be installing it in my nws cooperative site and had a question before the actual install. I am well aware when NCcast is enabled the feature uses a proprietary cloud algorithm to look at regional weather radar, nearby airport data, and surrounding Tempest stations. It then “corrects” or normalizes your local rain total to better match official regional figures. I want specifically to know exactly how much rain fell in my own yard, not an average of what fell in the broader neighborhood or city. Not sure what to do here. Suggestions?
Guess this potentially answers my question.
Why West Palm Beach is Bad for NC Rain
- Highly Localized Summer Sea-Breezes: Tropical downpours and afternoon thunderstorms in Palm Beach County are incredibly localized. A towering cumulonimbus cloud can dump two inches of rain over your specific property while leaving a neighbor’s yard completely dry just two blocks away. The NC Rain algorithm will assume your station’s heavy reading is an error because surrounding stations are dry, and it will artificially slash your real rainfall total.
- Sea Spray and Coastal Winds: If you are located close to the coast or the Intracoastal, brisk Atlantic winds can cause your mounting pole to vibrate. While NC Rain is designed to filter out this “false rain,” it often overcorrects during actual tropical downpours, causing your app to under-report real precipitation.
- Density of Bad Neighbor Data: Suburban West Palm Beach has a high density of Tempest users. If a nearby neighbor has their station poorly mounted (such as flat against a shaky wooden fence post or blocked by a roofline), their flawed, dampened data will warp your Nearcast model
After digging further South Florida’s hyper local summer downpours will cause the NC Rain feature to mistake my real, heavy backyard rain for an error and artificially slash the totals to match drier neighbors. Interested in seeing the raw performance of the Tempest sensor and accurately benchmark it against my manual gauges.
Case in point turning it off forces the app to display the hardware’s direct haptic sensor measurements instead of regional modeled data.
You can see both in Halcyon.
Turn NC off. I have been using Tempest since it came out and have measured multiple times with NC both on and off. I compared Tempest to the old fashioned rain tube mounted nearby and find that the reading is much more consistent between the two when I have NC turned off. Make sure you have a good solid mount/pole for the Tempest. Vibration can be interpreted as rain. Simple enough to confirm by watching for any reported rain when you know there wasn’t any. I have 2 Tempest. One is mounted on an old satellite dish mount on the roof and the other is mounted on a six foot PVC pole clamped to a t-post with radiator clamps. Both of these provide sufficient rigidity that I get no false rain reports even in high Oklahoma winds.
