Rain Check adjustment data provided somehow for local database adjustments

Developers
1

For those of us trying to keep our own databases containing rainfall information, is there any way the adjustments to either the full day or the minute by minute amounts can be provided to an automated process?

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2

You’d perhaps have to find some way to query the REST API based on a one-day offset and seed your own database I’d think, but given the randomness of when WF catches up with the previous day’s rain, it might be a painful thing to try to do.

3

Both RainCheck and raw rain accumulation values are stored in the same timeseries. The RainCheck values are initially stored as NULL values. They are then backfilled once per day just after the RainCheck process completes. That process will normally complete no later than 8am local time.

4

Super. That’s exactly what I need.

A process to be developed will run every hour beginning at something like 3am

check for availability of the RainCheck updated data

once available, use to update corresponding
rain observations entries in the database table containing observations
once processed for the day, do not check again until next day

Not a difficult process to implement.

Thanks

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5

I’d suggest you add a raincheck field and then you’d be able to easily display and compare the two.

You’d also have to have something to check periodically as the time of day when your rain is checked is unspecified by WF and likely will change over time. Basically something along the lines of ‘if I do not have rain check data then go look again’

6

Yes, exactly what I was planning to do.

Separate fields for original reported vs rain check value to be able to perform historical evaluation of the effectiveness of the rain check.

I am also planning on adding another table to the database to record the rainfall data as recorded by a traditional garden rain gauge and other nearby PWS stations on WU.

Thanks for the suggestions.

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7

So for the backfill, if I query the AIR REST data after raincheck has run say today, for the 11:59 pm (GMT-8 for my tz) data for previous day, will that will capture the station raw and rain check accumulated total for that previous day?

Edit: Add GMT reference

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8

Yes, that should be true for 8:00am local time at the latest (no need to wait till 11:59pm). That is, by 8am local, RainCheck will have run for the previous local day (and it often runs much earlier).

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