Author Topic: So how should you define a storm anyway?  (Read 1322 times)

elagache

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So how should you define a storm anyway?
« on: December 17, 2021, 10:34:27 PM »
Dear WeatherCat users who are fussy about measuring how much precipitation has fallen,

One of the new features of WeatherCat 3.0 (released March 2018) was RAINSTORM period for the STAT$ tag.  This allows you to create tags describing the conditions of a storm.  I use this feature extensively in my Storm Status Custom Text Window that is described here:

https://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=2689.msg26014#msg26014

You can even download a copy to install on your WeatherCat installation.

As described on the WeatherCat manual (on page 213) the RAINSTORM period is defined as the time between the first measurable rainfall rate and now.  It becomes undefined if there hasn't been any measurable rainfall in 24 hours.

Those of us with Davis Vantage stations have access to another attempt to track the total amount of rain from a storm.  Looking at that manual (page 23 in mine) Davis defines a storm (and I quote:)

"It takes 2 tips of the rain bucket to begin a storm event and 24 hours without rain to end a storm event."


When Stu released WeatherCat 3 he explicitly warned us that WeatherCat and Davis consoles would disagree from time to time based on their different definitions of a storm.  Most of the time, WeatherCat will "underreport" a storm in situations where the storm starts with a lot very light rain or drizzle that doesn't produce a measurable rainfall rate.

The difference in perspectives I think can be easily understood by where the two definitions were created.  At the time, Stu was in Scotland where it can be "moist" for many days at a time.  In such cases the Davis console will fail to clear in between storms so long as so little as another hundredth of an inch of moisture is detected.  For people living in such areas that makes the Davis definition not very useful.

On the other hand, the engineers of Davis Instruments are based in arid Northern California and the problem is drought.  From their perspective, drizzle is most definitely counted since that too will stop quickly - at least usually.

I don't live far from Davis Instruments and my weather station was able to show why Stu's definition is in some cases better.  Last Sunday into Monday we had another atmospheric river event and received over 4" of rain.  That unfortunately caused some flooding in our workshop.  We mostly had a break on Tuesday, but did get a small amount of drizzle.  Wednesday night into Thursday we got another storm.  Thursday morning, WeatherCat reported the following for the storm:



On the other hand, my Davis console was "confused" by the drizzle and instead reported that we had endured one very long storm:



Thankfully, the Davis console was wrong.  I did get enough of a break to clean up after the flooding over the weekend.  Alas, the WeatherCat report indicated another substantial amount of rain had fallen overnight - enough to bring in more flooding in spite of my attempts to redirect the source of water.

Until now I had been siding with the Davis engineers, mostly because I wanted to count every drop!  I have since been persuaded that WeatherCat has the better implementation of storm period.  Nonetheless, as this exercise has demonstrated, how one goes about defining a storm purely from weather instrument data is anything but clear!

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

xairbusdriver

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Re: So how should you define a storm anyway?
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2021, 11:51:13 PM »
Thanks Edouard, I've not used a CTW at all! I assume the eight different "<data>...</data>" section in the <dict>ionaries are a small graphic objects? Do you have a screen shot that displays a recent "Storm" text window with the graphics or are they specific images you've gathered for your own site?

BTW, I'm not getting the Google Maps graphic in your "Region" tab/page. :-\
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF COUNTRIES
Those that use metric = #1 Measurement system
And the United States = The Banana system


elagache

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CTW info. (Re: Define a storm anyway?)
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2021, 09:44:28 PM »
Dear X-Air and WeatherCat feature-o-holics,

Thanks Edouard, I've not used a CTW at all! I assume the eight different "<data>...</data>" section in the <dict>ionaries are a small graphic objects?

Actually Custom Text Windows (CTW) are simply ways to display information that WeatherCat has available on your computer screen.  They are described in the WeatherCat Manual (where else?) starting on page 44.  Quoting from the manual:

"To create items in a CTW, ctrl-click in the window. A pop-up menu lists items that can be added (the window name can also be set from this menu as well as other functionality). These items consist of time and date, the channels available from your station and STAT$ tags (see Custom Web for more details of STAT$ tags)."

Those of us who have gotten to understand the STAT$ tag will realize that is the most powerful feature of a CTW.  So for example, the encoding that produces the storm total in my Storm Status CTW is this:

Total rainfall for storm: STAT$RAIN:TOTAL:RAINSTORM$

All this functionality is created by WeatherCat so you shouldn't "uncan" the files used to share a CTW.  What you have observed is indeed some sort of XML format that is used to represent the content of a CTW for sharing.  The data section isn't some sort of graphic, but something internal to WeatherCat.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

P.S.

BTW, I'm not getting the Google Maps graphic in your "Region" tab/page. :-\

*Sigh*, I have no idea when I'll have time to fix things like that . . .   :(

xairbusdriver

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Re: So how should you define a storm anyway?
« Reply #3 on: December 18, 2021, 11:26:53 PM »
Quote
I have no idea when I'll have time to fix things like that . . .
Who knows how to "fix" Google?! [banghead] [lol]
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF COUNTRIES
Those that use metric = #1 Measurement system
And the United States = The Banana system


xairbusdriver

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Re: So how should you define a storm anyway?
« Reply #4 on: December 19, 2021, 03:26:21 PM »
When I copid and pasted the link to the Google Map, I got this 'reply":
Quote
The Google Maps Platform server rejected your request. Invalid request. Missing the 'size' parameter.
Fixing that parameter might help, assuming Google hasn't changed the format requirements. However, I discourage folks from publicly publishing their geographic locations. While we usually think of phishing/SPAM/etc. from our interweb info, it can also be used by actual people looking for physical locations of targets.

Instead of publishing your exact home address, consider a more generic 'map' using a local police or fire station and have the 'map' cover several square miles of area. I don't include any map of our house location except where needed by a few of the "partners" I share my wx data with. And I notice that some of those tend to lose track of me, anyway. [rolleyes2]
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF COUNTRIES
Those that use metric = #1 Measurement system
And the United States = The Banana system


Weatheraardvark

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Re: So how should you define a storm anyway?
« Reply #5 on: December 19, 2021, 06:34:22 PM »
Sometimes, there is crud in the rain cone that slows down the normal flow of water to the pan.  then it breaks through as the plug is pushed and you get a big reading although it was just drizzle.   Plus if you look in your console manual, the storm is how much you got over the past 24 hours, different from daily rain.   
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elagache

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Google wants money. (Re: define a storm anyway?)
« Reply #6 on: December 19, 2021, 11:02:04 PM »
Dear X-Air, Weatheraardvark, and WeatherCat faithful,

When I copid and pasted the link to the Google Map, I got this 'reply":
Quote
The Google Maps Platform server rejected your request. Invalid request. Missing the 'size' parameter.

That's not the error I got.  What I saw was:

The Google Maps Platform server rejected your request. You must use an API key to authenticate each request to Google Maps Platform APIs. For additional information, please refer to http://g.co/dev/maps-no-account

Google insists you can get an API key without giving them a billing address, but they sure tried to get a billing address from me.  At that point I gave up.  I have way more important things to do than joist with Google over API keys.

Anybody who thought the Internet was "free" hasn't been paying any attention. . . .  >:(

Oh well, Edouard