If I select a Personal Weather Station rather than a NWS station, where does Rachio get forecasts from? Unless I’m mistaken, a PWS only gives current and past conditions, not forecast future conditions.
I would like to select a nearby PWS for local conditions, since I live in a microclimate that is quite different from any of the nearest NWS stations; in particular, it rains more here than where the NWS stations are.
Given that Rachio makes some decisions based on forecast conditions (such as rainfall amounts), how does it deal with a weather station that doesn’t issue forecasts? Is there a way to use one station for current and past conditions, but another for forecasts?
In particular: “When this option is toggled on we are going to be gathering data from both the nearest national weather station, and the nearest personal weather stations.”
This is the only mention I’ve seen of drawing data from more than one source. It still doesn’t say where forecasts come from. If you visit the websites for the stations (following the procedure given in the article), they show only current and historical data, not forecasts.
I am running on a fixed schedule (due to drought restrictions) and I have selected a local PWS. The Weather Intelligence features seem to be working as intended, since I sometimes see updates such as:
Water all zones (PM) skipped since station PWS_PAULCROSS4 observed 0.37
in and predicted 0.1 in of precipitation with a total threshold of 0.125
This is fine, but I am still having trouble understanding where these numbers come from. If I view the PWS’s details at pwsweather.com, I can see the historical precipitation amounts, but I have no idea over what time frame the “observed 0.37 in” was measured. Additionally, there is nothing at the PWS about a forecast, so I have no idea where the “predicted 0.1 in” comes from.
Can you be a little more specific about where the precipitation observations and forecasts come from, and over what time frames they apply?
We use 24 hours in the past for observed precipitation.
Each weather provider (we use Aeris) has proprietary ways to determine forecasted precipitation using radar, satellite, and station data. Some are more accurate than others, and we are always looking at ways of increasing the accuracy of this data.
This article gives some more context around rain skip and has some more information.
