Lately when I look at my zones the soil moisture percentage has been changing in ways that make no sense. Yesterday morning, the 26th at 6:15, all the zones showed 110%. Now this was with no rain for days and sprinkling in some zones on the 25th and the 23rd. My recollection was that the afternoon of the 25th, zones showed soil moisture of the 80s.
Skip ahead to this morning. We had .84 inches of rain here before last midnight and the soil moisture shows (at 1pm) 94% and 92%. An hour ago it showed moisture in the 70s and 80s in each zone. It’s muggy, overcast and 75 degrees presently.
Is there a timing issue with the software? I would have thought that this morning the moisture should be pegged at 110%.
It looks to me like the soil moisture is the predicted moisture at the end of the day. Previous day’s balance plus any planned or actual irrigation or predicted precipitation minus crop use and evaporation. Not sure how often it predicts the rain or evaporation data, maybe that’s why it’s changing.
Have you gone in a looked at “more detail” in the moisture details for a zone? That will start giving you a better understanding of what is going on. While you can see it in the mobile apps, its kind of hard to read. If you go to the web app, you will be able to easily read the labels and see a whole week of information at a time.
This seems very odd. Makes me wonder what the precipitation amounts were that are getting picked up. Are you using a PWS? Perhaps that PWS had an erroneous reading.
This is correct.
It does this 12 hours before the schedule is to run, and again 1 hour before running time.
I would definitely take a look at the PWS’s around you and see which one you feel is the most accurate based on what you’ve been seeing. And sometimes, even when you’ve picked what looks like a good one, you may have to change. I had a weather station less than a mile from my house that I’d been using for well over a year, and suddenly it stopped recording precipitation. I ended up checking the 4-5 closest to my house and all were not reporting precipitation data correctly (meaning not at all!) . I finally found 2 stations around 1.5 miles fromm my house that seem to be working well.
Investigate the soil moisture table to see where things may be going wrong – it’s a really critical information. Honestly, should be a bit more discoverable.
It’s impossible to troubleshoot without studying the table. Some rows are hidden, so be sure to click the sideways gray triangle for more details. If you need help interpreting the moisture table, post a screenshot of it in its entirety (including the hidden rows).
