Rachio was taking good care of my lawn most of the summer. Sometime in August I started to get saturation skips even while there was no rain. I thought, maybe it knows what its doing, I’ll run the stations manually for a bit and it will all even out. Well, with a family of 6 + 1 dog and a busy summer turned that “bit” into weeks and here we are in mid October with a very dry lawn. Not too unusual for Colorado this time of year, but it could have been better.
So, today I start digging into the details. I have my weather intelligence set to gather data from the nearest single station less than 1 mile west of my house. I vaguely remember making this change thinking it would be most accurate. This morning I discover that station is faulty. It is recording rainfall swinging wildly from zero to 83,886 inches daily. That will certainly make Rachio think your soil is saturated and trigger the saturation skip.
Lesson learned. Today I set it back to gather weather data from the broader network, so I am never relying on a single station again. You may consider doing the same if it is not your own station you’re using.