Conditions reporting Heavy Clouds when it is clear?

[Farmerdan]

Hello all. 

First question.  I purchased a new Davis Vantage Pro II wireless station to add to my network of stations.  I purchased this one with the Solar and UV sensors.  Since I have started using the new station to feed data to Weathercat the Condition report is always saying Heavy Clouds even though there is not a cloud in the sky.  Is the condition output a function of a particular sensor or a calculated output from several sensors?  Is there a way to fix it?

Second question when I was upgrading my station I picked up A Soil temperature, Moisture and leaf wetness station as well.  Is there a way to include these readings in the statistics page?  The UV and Solar self populated the report but the 4 soil temp and moisture probes didn't.

Station reporting to weather underground Station ID; KORGRASS1

https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KORGRASS1#history

Thanks in advance for your help.

- Dan

 

[elagache]

Dear Dan and WeatherCat fans,

First things first - Welcome to the WeatherCat forum!

First question.  I purchased a new Davis Vantage Pro II wireless station to add to my network of stations.  I purchased this one with the Solar and UV sensors.  Since I have started using the new station to feed data to Weathercat the Condition report is always saying Heavy Clouds even though there is not a cloud in the sky.  Is the condition output a function of a particular sensor or a calculated output from several sensors?  Is there a way to fix it?

The current conditions are calculated and the algorithm is a bit simplistic.  You can read how it is computed on page 85 of the WeatherCat manual.

I thought someone had tried to create some better rules, but I can't find the thread on the forum at the moment.  Perhaps someone else can provide a pointer.

Second question when I was upgrading my station I picked up A Soil temperature, Moisture and leaf wetness station as well.  Is there a way to include these readings in the statistics page?  The UV and Solar self populated the report but the 4 soil temp and moisture probes didn't.

Unfortunately, I don't think you can change the display of the statistics page.  You can however assess that data using the WeatherCat STATS$ tag.  You can learn more about how to use that tag starting on page 100 of the WeatherCat manual.  You can access the manual from the WeatherCat Help menu.

Cheers, Edouard 

[Blicj11]

Welcome to the Forum Dan!

With regards to your Condition question, you will just need to play with (edit) the rules until you figure out what works for your location. Here is a screenshot of mine, which are based on a year of of experimenting during different seasons. What works for your elevation, etc, will be different than what works for someone else.

[Farmerdan]

Found the problem.  For some reason the default calculations were using yearly evapotranspiration.  So if yearly ET was above 0 it was returning Heavy clouds.  Had to change all the cloud calculations to cloud base.  Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

[Blicj11]

Cloud Base isn't perfect. but it's pretty good. Here is a thread about the Current Conditions Calculator:

http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=1845.msg16492#msg16492