Precipitation issues

So we had a little more rain here in Fresno, CA last week. According to the weather station at the Fresno Airport (which is the one my Rachio uses for service) we received .77" overnight from about 11pm to 2am. This ‘deluge’ of rain was pretty concentrated for our area, and resulted in a great deal of runoff from our yard.
So my question is does this rainfall truly replenish my zones fully? When watering, the system inserts cycles to ensure the water truly penetrates the zone. But rain just falls, and doesn’t cooperate to ideally irrigate my yard. So is something that software could eventually handle by viewing how much rain falls, and in what timeframe, so it can create an ‘effective’ precipitation rate, instead of just capturing the actual rate? I’m worried when we get to the edges of the rainy season that a short, heavy rainfall will be incorrectly counted in my moisture levels, pushing off a needed watering.

Hi @chrisandeden-
This is a really interesting point. Currently, flex daily schedules apply the entire amount of precipitation received to your moisture level, whether it was a fifteen minute torrential downpour or a 3 hour drizzle. With weather data, I believe we only get hourly information, which would be a shortcoming in this calculation. However, using any sort of timeframe would be an improvement on how we currently handle it. My only other thought is how much impact it would really have on watering in the end, especially considering they are hour intervals. To be honest, I wouldn’t know until I ran the numbers. I like this a lot though, I think it is another way to make Rachio even smarter, which is always the goal! Thank you for the feedback!
McKynzee :rachio:

PS- For now, if you are concerned about this, one solution would be to lower your Allowed Depletion in the advanced settings of your zone. This would cause your system to run a little more frequently. Not ideal, but an idea!