Arrgh ! what a wasted day !!

[jace]

Out for a few hours this morning then got an email from the (sometimes) friendly admin at AWEKAS who I send data to.

Your station is sending invalid values to AWEKAS Weather Network. One of our operators has disabled the following sensor(s):

 new deactivation     : precipitation (reported value 2.8mm )  - 24 hour(s) until: 11.01.2015 09:00 local time
 new deactivation     : rain rate (reported value 8.2mm/h )  - 24 hour(s) until: 11.01.2015 09:00 local time

Apparently I had a max rain rate of 500mm/h at one stage and they picked it up as radar showed no precipitation at my station.

Got home to find the rain gauge cone had been blown off, (It was secure last time i checked a couple of months back). So the buckets were bouncing up and down in the wind 

Between 07:01 and 10:22 recorded a grand total of 136.2 mm (5.5 inch), where as my  5" MET Office ground gauge had 0.8 mm (0.03 in).

It's taken almost 3 hours to correct the individual readings and then work out that before restarting The Cat after deleting the WeatherCatData.cat.hrs file I needed to reset the rainfall data on my console  otherwise it would still report the wrong total rainfall 

No idea why the rain cone came off, I know it was locked in position because I always pull from the top edge to check it's in place but there you go.

JC

[Blicj11]

Sorry for your frustrations Jace. At least you got the notification from AWEKAS that something was amiss before you went too long.

[elagache]

Dear JC, Blick, and WeatherCat station caregivers,

Got home to find the rain gauge cone had been blown off, (It was secure last time i checked a couple of months back). So the buckets were bouncing up and down in the wind 

. . . .

No idea why the rain cone came off, I know it was locked in position because I always pull from the top edge to check it's in place but there you go.

My sympathies for all the hassles.  Is there any indication of damage on either the cone or the base?  My VP-2 cone is really tight.  I put some lubricant because otherwise it would be nearly impossible to remove.

Hope things are back in order!

Cheers, Edouard 

[LesCimes]

Bummer for sure! Glad you caught it promptly. Earlier this year the reed switch in my rain gauge quick working consistently. I didn't catch it right away. Figure I missed 10" of rain (extrapolating from the nearby NWS rain data). Another time the transmitter for the anemometer flipped upside down and got wet. Showed I had a 102 mph gust. Obviously that was wrong. One never knows when equipment is going to mess up one way or another.

[LesCimes]

Speaking of "wasted day" I decided to tweak the web cam and web site yesterday. The tweaking messed up the network connection somehow and took down the whole weather station. This morning a call Internet supplier, Comcast, got the internet working again. Still have unresolved issues with my weather server connection to the Internet. I never seem to remember the adage, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." It is broken now. Rats.

[Blicj11]

Every one of your fellow WeatherCatters can relate!