Hardware is a Rachio3.
This evening I got an inch of rain. Later when I pulled up the app the weather for the day correctly reflected that, but the schedule was still set to run the next day. Ok, I figured I’d check back later and see if it was fixed. I check back now (around midnight) and see that my zones have gone from 110% to 0% and the app says I actually got 0.06" of rain instead of the 1+ my rain gauge showed. The schedule is still set to run tomorrow which I obviously do not want. Now I gave to go in and manually update each zone to be full, which at least will save me from manually skipping waterings. A week or so ago this same thing happened with about a third of an inch of rain, which is even more cumbersome to deal with since I don’t want to fill my zones off that.
My weather source is set to “Weather Network”, should I change that? Is there a way to submit feedback on subpar weather data or whatever magic Rachio uses to “know” my localized weather? My goal is not have to babysit the Rachio, otherwise what’s the point.
As you say, Rachio forecast rain of about an inch, but after the rain went through, it calculate your rainfall as a small fraction of what you got. This is very typical rainfall pattern in much of the country, especially in summer. I ended up getting my own weather station just for this purpose. If you don’t want to do that, you need to choose a specific weather station near your that will work better.
Under Weather Source, you can choose the recommended Weather Network, which averages weather (rain in this case) in your area, or choose a specific weather station. You should choose one close to your house which 1) is Reliable, 2) Reports rainfall and 3) Mirrors your rainfall as closely as possible. This makes a huge difference and is definitely worth doing.
BTW, only the rainfall values are used from the specified weather station. Temperature, humidity, etc. are still from the Weather Intelligence for your area. But rainfall is the most critical to irrigation.
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I’ll try that. What really gets me is that the app DID report the correct rainfall at some point, then changed its mind.
Well, it forecast a larger amount of rain, and then corrected it to what actually fell (some place). I honestly don’t know if it uses a specific location for rainfall, or averages for an area. Seems like if it’s going to average temperatures, it would average rainfall. But I don’t know.
