Unclear rainin / precip params meaning in Windy.Stations API

Vladislav Iaroshchuk

Hi!

I’m implementing my weather station exporter to Windy.Stations https://github.com/shchuko/acurite-bridge

I’m not sure I’ve understood how to report ‘rainin’, so currently I simply disabled reporting this parameter and need your support.

Please correct me if I’m wrong

Pre-conditions: my station reports current precipitation accumulation, not increase, evety ~30..60 seconds. So I'm calculating rainin myself
At 1:05 precipitation accumulation was 1.0 inch
At 2:15 precipitation accumulation changed to 1.01 inch (increase +0.01 inch)
At 2:25 precipitation accumulation changed to 1.015 inch (increase +0.005 inch)
No more rain than, next few hours precipitation accumulation was 1.015 inch

My station reports the data once a minute. I guess that I have to report rainin this way:

At 1:05 rainin=0.0
[...] (no rain this period)
At 2:14 rainin=0.0
At 2:15 rainin=0.01 (accumulation increase 1.0 -> 1.01; +0.01)
At 2:16 rainin=0.01 (last hour increase is still 0.01)
[...] (accumulation reported by station was not changed)
At 2:24 rainin=0.01
At 2:25 rainin=0.015 (accumulation increase 1.01 -> 1.015; +0.005)
At 2:26 rainin=0.015 (last hour increase is still 0.015)
[...] (no more rain)
At 3:14 rainin=0.015 (last hour increase is still 0.015)
At 3:15 rainin=0.005 (increase recorded at 2:15 is out of “last hour window”, so now last hour increase is 0.005)
At 3:16 rainin=0.005 (last hour increase is still 0.005)
[...] (no more rain)
At 3:24 rainin=0.005 (last hour increase is still 0.005)
At 3:25 rainin=0.0 (increase recorded at 2:25 is out of “last hour window”, so now last hour increase is 0.0)

tl;dr I’m using a sliding 1-hour window and reporting the precipitation increase over the last hour. If the increase is too old to be in this window, it’s dropped and not reported.

Am I right here?

Muhammad Sufyan Anwar

Your approach seems correct. You're using a sliding 1-hour window to report 'rainin' based on precipitation accumulation changes. If the increase occurred within the last hour, it's reported; otherwise, it's dropped. Your proposed timestamps align well with this method.

Muhammad Sufyan Anwar

Your approach appears sound. You're utilizing a sliding 1-hour window to determine 'rainin' based on changes in precipitation accumulation. If the increase occurred within the past hour, it's logged; otherwise, it's disregarded. Your suggested timestamps complement this method effectively.

jmunkki

@Vladislav-Iaroshchuk I don't care all that much about reporting on Windy (it's kind of our third option for viewing the weather station data) and the spec leaves things open to interpretation.

Now, let's say you are driving in a car and you have a speedometer. Should that dial show your sliding distance traveled in the past hour or should it show your speed at the moment you read it? That's why I think a sliding one hour average of rainfall is less than helpful.

What's worse, unless you can go indefinitely far back in history to a point where the average rainfall was zero, there's no way for you to derive the instantaneous rainfall from an hourly sliding average.

If I'm looking at the data as a human, I want to see at a glance if the rain seems to have ended. A declining average might tell you that it has ended, but it might also mean that it's raining less. A per minute graph is more helpful.