We had some freezing rain/sleet to start the event, and it has been raining for about 12 hours now (temps hovering right around freezing), but the SKY is only intermittently reporting rain for brief periods of time (a couple of minutes here and there). The rain has been light/moderate consistently in that time period. Is the layer of ice on my sensor likely preventing the sensor from reading the vibrations from the droplets?
I’m sure that it will, since ice accumulation on the upper dome would have a effect similar to placing an sound insulating material around an audio microphone. The signal from the rain drops would drop quickly as ice builds up and to the Sky would react as if less and less rain was being recorded…
3 Likes
Not shure about that explanation… ice is a dense material, so the mechanical wave should be transmitted, maybe a little damping will occur.
And the principal if measuring those might be sensitive to detect the difference. Hence, ist would become a question of data analysis, @WeatherFlowStaff ?
So a little more information, I wound up going out there and inspecting the sensor. there was nearly 0.2 inches of ice on it, I knocked all the ice off and it immediately began detecting the rain. So the ice was indeed the culprit.
3 Likes
a possibble explanitation is that the ice could transport the sound pulse from one transducer to the other, but that would be independent of the wind speed
The ice dampens the vibrations.
1 Like
nice observations, @eric.guill25 ! Yes, ice frozen to the SKY could definitely affect the sensitivity of the rain sensor.
1 Like
Keyword : massdamping 
1 Like