A few days ago we had a heavy rain day and my SWS reported 219mm of rain for the day. Now it was heavy rain but 219mm seem a bit high when the news was reporting that a suburb next to mine had the highest rain level for the day of 77mm. I have found that my station seems to generally report higher than what I would expect.
Is there something wrong with my station or is the calibration off??
There is indeed something āweirdā. Just checked your data and the wind didnāt seem particular gusty during rain that could indicate false rain via vibration.
Letās call @wfsupport to have a look at your data and maybe it indeed needs some tweaking in calibration.
Hi Thomas,
If the mount isnāt rock solid, heavy rain can induce vibrations that seem to elevate the measured amount. That being said, mine does the same thing. It can be off by a factor of 2, either high or low. The best response Iāve gotten to date from WF is that it will ālearnā from nearby weather stations. What I think of that āsolutionā isnāt fit to type here. It kind of reminds me of the old āweather rockā. When itās wet, itās raining. When itās dry, itās not. Good luck.
Iāve had it for over a year and it seems to always read higher rain reading. I guess my unit has a learning deficiency.
Itās a shame because the point of buying a PWS is to get reasonably accurate reading.
And itās mounted on a steel pipe thatās secure. Iām sure it would get some high frequency vibrations but what should I mount it on to get zero vibrations?
Somewhere, a couple of years ago, I think I saw the test setup was an array of vertically oriented steel pipes. High frequency vibrations that donāt resemble raindrops should be filtered out.
My station has been running for a couple of months now. I also have a Davis station with a very carefully calibrated rain gauge. Initially the Weatherflow rain reporting was all over the map but after a week or two it got much better. I have noticed though that it tends to over report during heavy downpours and under reports in light misty conditions. We had a day last week that was light/misty all day. The Davis recorded 0.28 inches and the Weatherflow recorded ZERO. I really hope it gets better. Any suggestions would be welcome.