I’ve recently set up a Rachio 3 and now that it has rained a few times, I have discovered that when using either Weather Intelligence Plus or selecting a nearby weather station that the precipitation amount is significantly underreported. This occurs when using a daily flex schedule for two zones.
On February 24th the nearby weather stations (IBENDI53, IBENDI108) reported around 4mm of rain (0.4cm) whereas the Rachio when set to Weather Intelligence Plus reported just 0.01cm. I then switched the weather source to this station.
Yesterday, March 1st, the weather station recorded 12mm (1.2cm) of rain whereas the Rachio reported 0.02cm of precipitation. As far as I can tell the data from this station looks to be consistent with other nearby stations and is reporting correctly.
I’ve added some screenshots of the reported rain amounts and the soil moisture details for one zone for the above dates.
I had the same issue with the Weather Network. I changed the setting to reference a single PWS that reads more accurate data 0.12 miles away. Go to, more, controller settings, Weather Source, and then click Weather Station, NOT Weather Network. then click Select Station, Personal, and then choose which station you want.
Thanks but I have already switched to a local weather station to see if that would give more accurate data, however as I mentioned the precipitation yesterday was also very underreported.
Switching the weather station won’t change past observations on the Rachio. It only uses the currently selected weather station for the present and future.
Understood, I switched to a local weather station a few days prior to the rain yesterday to see if that would make any difference. I’ve edited my original post to make that a bit clearer.
Further to my above issue, we had more rain yesterday, March 2nd and before the end of the day I changed the weather source on my Rachio to this weather station. By the end of the day the station had recorded a total of 5.5mm (0.55cm) but when checking the Rachio this morning it reported that no rainfall had occurred both in the weather section or in the soil moisture details for the zones.
Another point of observation, before the 6th March I switched to this PWS. On the 6th March it recorded 14mm (1.4cm) of rain. Rachio reported just 0.1cm of rain.
It looks like the Rachio is consistent in recording rain and by extension the weather stations I’ve tried are reporting rainfall correctly, but the Rachio amounts are significantly lower. I wondered if perhaps it is a unit conversion gone awry or some other adjustment that is reducing the amounts by quite a factor.
Interesting…! i noticed in the past few weeks that my rachio has watered even though it rained more than the default treshold for weather skip. This was something that i didn’t see in the past as i could recall.
I didn’t go through as much work and documented it as well as you did, but i did change from my local weather station (a few houses down from me) that is very accurate to the weather intelligence plus. Since then it hasn’t rained unfortunately.
I’m going to subscribe to this thread to see if it could be related. If it rains again i’ll track carefully.
@dane have you been able to look in to this issue at all?
I reset my controller the other day just in case it might have resolved the issue, unfortunately it did not. We had 5mm (0.5cm) of rain yesterday but it was not reported by the Rachio.
It’s no problem. I apologize for the delay. While wait for the results of Engineering investigation, I thought would share that I am UNABLE to replicate your exact issue.
This means that I spoofed your address on my own Rachio device and chose weather station IBENDI108 and I am showing precipitation for the 14th, 15th and 16th. The WU page does show precipitation recorded on those days. While your moisture graphs are still showing zero value for precipitation for that same time frame. (Note I am displaying in inches)
That’s interesting. However those precipitation amounts don’t seem to match the recorded amounts from the weather station, for the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th it reported 0, 0.03, 0.19 and 0.2 inches respectively. Does changing the weather station change past days rainfall amounts or just future amounts?
Perhaps I could also try spoofing a different address and weather station somewhere in the USA just to see if I can get the Rachio to match a weather station in a different location?
@TastyFishes Thank you for reporting this issue. The engineering team looked into this and it is now resolved. There was a defect in our new weather v2 service. This will correct all observations happening today and moving forward, but will not fix past observations.
Thanks for your response and fixing the issue. I’m looking forward to using the full capabilities of the Rachio. There isn’t any rain forecast in my area for the next week or so but I’ll add an update once I get some rain to confirm that everything is working well on my end.
