Same issue here…RC zeroed out rain that actually came down…something needs to be looked at and adjusted…
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Wow, RC erased the entire thunderstorm/rain event we had yesterday early morning. There is absolutely NO WAY they are using radar for verification. That storm could not have been missed. Rain was light. SKY reported .07", but in reality was probably more. RC changed it to 0.0"
Saw a similar issue with my unit. Had moderate rain coming down at the end of the evening on 7/11. It continued to rain after midnight for about another 30-40 minutes (I was awake and watching TV, so I confirm the precipitation and that the Tempest was recording it). Woke up the next day, and saw that RC zero’d out and eliminated all the rain that happened after midnight…
EDIT: If you look at the Tempest station a mile or so south of of me, it also shows the same rain storm crossing the midnight mark, but RC didn’t zero out its data… so you can see what RC eliminated on my station…
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My tests with rain check were very inaccurate also when compared to a Stratus Bucket gauge so I turned rain check off so
I am a new user.
Yesterday was my first rainfall.
My COCORAHS gauge is 18 inches from the Tempest in a test set up, before mounting up high.
Cocorahs measured .23 inches,
Tempest, .21.
I figured the difference of .02 was acceptable. Now this morning, rain check changed the tempest reading to .18
From reading this thread there does not seem to be a WeatherFlow comment of how rain check works.
Thus far today Tempest measured .07 and Cocorahs .09, again a .02 difference.
I don’t understand the reason for rain check or how it works. Why would Tempest adjust down, lower than what my COCORAHS actually measured?
Is there a way to manually adjust with rainvheck to get a more accurate reading with Tempest?
Can anyone direct me to somewhere on the website that explains all this?
Lastly, I have seen in this thread that some of you turn off Raincheck. How do you do this?
Thanks.
@PapiG Welcome to the WeatherFlow Community. To be perfectly honest, I have found Rain Check to be great for only zeroing out a false rain amount total for the previous day. It is suppose to adjust the rain total to match what accurately fell according to radar data as well as other measurements like CoCoRaHS data. Unfortunately, that is not always the case and more so so it tends to lower or raise the amount that was measured by the SKY or Tempest beyond what it should in reality.
Is Rain Check a good idea? This is a hard question to answer. It does work sometimes but it’s not always reliable. And to answer your question of “Is there a way to manually adjust with raincheck to get a more accurate reading with Tempest?” The answer is No. No way to manually adjust the rain total.
I personally have Rain Check disabled. When Rain Check was first introduced, it worked quite well for my WeatherFlow units. Now it’s not very accurate for me. Supposedly it helps with haptic sensor calibration but I haven’t seen where it helps my units.
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Thanks KJ.
I will wait for many more days, just to see what happens, and pay attention to the difference between my COCORAHS and the RainCheck changes.
If after a period of time the Tempest is more accurate than the RainCheck change, I too will disable it.
You mentioned you disabled the raincheck. How is that done? I don’t find that in the app anywhere.
@PapiG To disable RainCheck:
Go to Settings, Stations, select your station, then Manage Devices, select the Tempest device, then Advanced, then turn off the Use RainCheck toggle
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Thank you.
I appreciate your assistance.
Glad I could help, Mark.
Doing this. My area got some isolated extreme/very heavy rain yesterday and I checked it this morning and see that it took off a whole .10th of an inch from the quarter inch total it got.
RC took away the rain that the Tempest Received yesterday in Clanton, AL.
My question to @tony.mcgee and @dsj is this: Will WF do away with RainCheck whenever the new rain gauge comes out? Seems like RC is a hit or miss.
Raincheck does not seem to be really accurate. I had about 29.7mm of rain yesterday and that’s the tipping bucket of my Davis Vantage Pro 2 and raincheck gives me half that. The station itself gave me 15.2mm with raincheck. Before that I was giving me about 50mm of rain. Although the haptic sensor seems in paper to be a good idea, the practical application is more complicated.
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Its weird, it seems to be fine for light rain, but heavy rain rain check is just off. We received 1.1 inches in our two manual rain gauges, and initially Tempest was 1.07 (very accurate), then rain check cut it down to .76… close but not in line.
Yeah, I’ve noticed rain check is not very accurate either. I am part of the CoCoraHs group with a certified separate rain gauge. Even when local rain reports are showing a general consensus of what the rain reports should be, it tends to be at least 50% off of the CoCoraHs reports. Yesterday the general reports around me showed a rain total average for a day, when calculated for 12 a.m. to 12 a.m. period added together, to be around 0.65". The rain check calculated down to 0.30". My Tempest showed 0.86". Conclusion I shut off rain check because it tends to be more inaccurate than the haptic gauge reports.