We got tons of rain on April 12th and 13th, 2020. My next door neighbor’s weather station (KSCAIKEN87) shows he got 0.34" on the 12th and 1.28" on the 13th, for a total of 1.62" over the 2 day period. My manual rain gauge in the middle of the field (no obstructions) behind my house showed a total of about 1.5" over the same 2 day period.
My Rachios using hyper local weather said I got 0.30" on the 12th and 0.20" on the 13th. It’s possible that the 12th is correct but the 13th seems way off. A friend of mine lives about 2-3 miles away and his is also way off for the 13th.
I have 2 Rachio 3 (12 Zones each) AC3056520 and AC7819912 both are running iro3-firmware-hk-5-630 and my app is Version 4.1.3 (13855).
Any ideas on how to correct this so it will report the rain accurately?
Since you have weather stations, you should turn off weather intelligence plus and select a weather station. That’ll get the best results. WI+ seems more intended for those without any nearby weather stations.
I would agree that’s great general advice. In my situation, my next door neighbor’s weather station (WS) goes off line a good bit and has temperature accuracy issues. I think it’s not mounted in the best location for temp readings. Either way those issues are out of my control. I was using his WS on my Gen 2 Rachio and changed to Gen 3 for the hyper local weather intelligence due to his WS issues.
Anyone else know how to fix my weather intelligence issue?
If his rain gage is reliable and is available to Rachio, that’s what really matters. Rachio only calculates plant water use from authoritative sources so PWSs are only used for rain data with normal WI.
Unfortunately his rain gauge is rarely accurate. I think it was accurate on the 12th and 13th due to the direction of the rain during this particular storm. It also matched up fairly well with my rain gauge. But it’s usually not accurate for rain data. It also seems to go offline frequently. The WI+ usually seems to match my rain gauge pretty close. I have noticed a few times the WI+ data has been way off when compared to my rain gauge. The 13th is an example and the last time I noticed it being way off was about 6-8 months ago.
Anyone else know what may have happened on the 13th to prevent the issue in the future?
Check to see what other PWS’s are near you. I use one about a mile and a half from my house since it seems to be the most accurate and pretty consistenly reporting data, even though I have others closer to me.
Since you’ve invested in a rain gauge, maybe a few dollars for a rain sensor is a good idea. I’ve got about a dozen rain sensors in use, though mostly on dumb controllers. A good backup.
I had the same problem with Weather Intelligence on those dates. We had a ton of widespread rain, but still my history showed trace precipitation and my zones’ buckets depleted. I ended up turning off this “feature” and choosing the closest reliable PWS I could find.
