Over the last month, I’ve noticed Raincheck becoming more and more inaccurate. Yesterday we received 45 minutes of heavy rain. Sky reported .2" of rainfall, which seemed accurate. This morning, Raincheck ‘corrected’ that total to 0 inches. This has occurred frequently in the last weeks.
IF Raincheck really uses weather radar to determine totals, it could not have missed the rain front that came through yesterday afternoon. IF instead, it uses data from the highway dept. weather station several miles away, it will always report incorrect amounts - since it is broken.
I’d really like local rainfall totals that are approximately correct - not zeroed values from an unknown source. Yes, I can turn off the feature - but then will have nothing but false rain from bird perchings on clear days. It is no-win!
I’m now really convinced Raincheck is drawing its data from the highway dept. station several miles away. Here is what it reported:
Is it just a coincidence that Raincheck corrected the SKY total from .45" to .27" as reported by the highway dept. station?
I don’t need that data - it is wrong. The station has been broken for a while. Many time it reports 0.00 rainfall even though it is pouring (cameras from the station show standing puddles in the roadway)
Furthermore it is miles away and doesn’t see the isolated storms that come through my property.
If WF could come out with a proper bird spike, or recommend one that works, I could turn off Raincheck and at least get a reasonable representation of what is happening at MY property.
Does any one notice when it rains very heavy from downpours tempest can’t keep up and winds up very short? I think this is a design flaw that appears to be very difficult to correct. Steady or lighter amounts are better.
Well thanks for letting me know , it’s a shame I should have saw that coming a mile away with this brand new technology. I don’t know if it’s reason enough to return but you can’t beat the sea saw rain gauges even as they try to produce no moving parts. I don’t get how one person posted that his tempest is perfect in every way? Even better then his accurite and Davis and believe me I have the same other too stations and there rain accuracy is spot on, not going to happen with hard downpours on tempest. So if that person is getting top results with hard summer rains then something doesn’t make sense. They didn’t state that so I’m wondering if theirs was put to the very hard rain test.
I have turned Raincheck off because of the kind of “corrections” that it was doing. As far as I know, I don’t have the type of bird “rain” perching that you have experienced, so I haven’t noticed false rain on clear days.
Earlier this month, we had hard rains all day long, some of them quite localized. Sky reported about 1.5 inches. The official weather site for Boise is about 6 miles away and well into the desert. Officially, Boise had about 0.9" of rain for that day. Raincheck “corrected” my total to even less than the official.
Observationally, both my wife and I were sure that we had well over an inch of rain and perhaps even MORE than Sky had reported, not less.
So I just turned off Raincheck.
Like you I have no idea where Raincheck gets its data. Is it another PWS? Is it from the NWS official site? Is it from a site along a highway? It would be a MASSIVE help if we could drill down to see the source of the data that Raincheck uses for its adjustments (I cannot even call them corrections when they introduce errors instead of remove them).
Boise is right against the foothills of a mountain range. That means that there are several micro-climates. Precipitation often backs off of the foothills, meaning that the closer to the foothills the heavier the precipitation. (The NWS site is miles further away from the foothills than where I live.)
There are also areas where the winds are often higher than others because of how storms interact with the foothills.
One of the reasons I wanted a PWS was for the local (my house) weather, not a standardized set of data that might be from a different micro-climate a mile away.
From experience with the Sky I can tell you that heavy thunderstorms take a few calibrations before it is spot on. My Sky out of the box did fantastic with light to moderate rain but was way too low with heavy thunderstorms. After some calibrations it is spot on with radar estimates and nearby weather stations as well. The raincheck has been described in previous posts but as I understand it, a combination of radar data, local obs, satellite data and other measures are used for raincheck.
My Sky would be accurate if it weren’t for birds perching. They can add .5" a day. Very heavy winds also induce vibrations (and false rain) due to the solar accessory. If Raincheck really used radar and satellite data, it would see the isolated rainstorms passing through the area and not zero out the Sky data for the day. I think in remote areas, Raincheck uses the nearest NWS station, or in my case - a state highway station. Neither of these are representative to my property due to the distance.
My local NWS station is 55 miles from my house and further inland - my house is 15 miles from the coast. Assuming raincheck is using this location, it’s best that I disable raincheck.
I wouldn’t disable Raincheck unless you know it to be wrong. You may live in an area where more local data is used (I am very remote). How are your Sky daily totals vs. Raincheck? Similar?
Yesterday, my Tempest clocked 182 minutes of rain. Before rain check kicked in I was registering .72 inches of rain which based on the length and intensity of the rain seemed pretty reasonable. Rain Check corrected that to .09 inches of rain this am. Other reports I’m my area (Tolland County CT) reported significant rain as well. Something isn’t right. The day before I was checked down from .2 inches to .13. Is this being addressed? Otherwise, I do love the the device and enjoy the community here.
Gosh this is frustrating. My rainfall got zeroed out by Raincheck AGAIN yesterday. I was working in the garden and got drenched. The ground was wet, and the trees dripping. Not zero! We use historical data for irrigation purposes. Inaccuracies lead to either wasted efforts or stressed crops. At this point I have no clue whether we got .25 inches this week or 1.5".
I recommended this system to friends and neighbors, but am unsure anymore. Thinking about it - if the rain sensor is so inaccurate that we need software to correct the totals from a remote location, a different solution needs to be put in place. Maybe the Haptic sensor is used to alert to the start of rain and the intensity, but a tipping bucket used for totals. I’d be okay buying an extra piece of hardware as long as it was integrated into the software - and accurate.
You’re describing the process I’m following at this time. Using Tempest for rainfall alert and intensity and my Atlas for rainfall total. For the past 2 days, I’ve had severe T-storms with heavy rainfall. Each day Tempest recorded (raincheck disabled) about 0.30 inches while the Atlas reported 0.75 inches
@dsj didn’t know if you had seen this thread but I’m bringing it to your attention since I’m seeing the same thing. On all stations (5075, 5080, 12859) RainCheck zeroed out actual precipitation starting sometime after 6/20/2020 for me. We haven’t had a bunch of rain which is why I hadn’t commented earlier. On 6/28/2020 my CoCoRaHS recorded 0.12" by 21:11 and RainCheck zeroed it out. 6/29/2020 only had 0.02" in the CoCoRaHS so not much, RC still was zero, but then on 6/30/2020 the CoCoRaHS reading was 0.13" (note that these days are WF days and the CoCoRaHS reading is 7 hours later) and RC zeroed it out again. For 7/1/2020 the CoCoRaHS had 0.22" with 0.13" by 1224 and again RainCheck zeroed out all the values.
Something is definitely up. I know that there have been several days with false rain due to birds but I don’t think RC should be zeroing things out, especially when radar can see the rain.
Could it have something to do with Dark Sky no longer being used? Is it possible the radar verification was through that service? Mine has clearly changed for the worse.
@daniellevin Dark Sky is a forecast service provider. Dark Sky has nothing to do with radar & satellite precipitation products which are part of Rain Check.
@gizmoev
Thanks, we will investigate the Rain Check issues.
