NOAA data completely wrong/off
I have a new installation running. After two weeks I noticed my program was almost not watering at all. Looking at the weather data, it was showing lots of rain and low temps, while it had been dry for weeks and temps actually 20 degrees higher than what Rainmachine was showing. Future watering for the programs were all zero or 10% of the program but there was no rain in any real forcasts. I had the default of NOAA weather and no others. Having it refresh did nothing. I went to NOAA website and put in my address and the weather data was correct to real life but totally different from Rainmachine.
I turned on two more weather services and waited a few hours for updates, but data was still wrong. "My location" was set to my actual address found using the location setting of my phone(and was correct on map). I redid "My location" set to the zipcode one town over from me, and then the weather data actually changed and was closer to real weather but still slightly off. Now my program(s) actually showed some scheduled future watering and in the next week the watering did run.
I thought I was good to go but now a week later all my future watering is at 10% and my forecast is 10+ degrees off from realtime again. Right now I have NOAA off and two other weather services on and the weather seems to finally be correct after two weather checks by rain machine. So my assumtion is the NOAA data is completely off whether I use my full address or just my zipcode, but is correct if I log into the NOAA site using those two locations. So somehow my Rainmachine is getting bad NOAA data.
I'll leave NOAA off and other weather services on as long as possible to confirm. But sometimes NOAA seems to turn itself back on, at least it does for a reboot. Which is why I think my weather forcast went bad again after a few weeks.
Any other ideas?
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I am finding the same problem.
I have a weather station in my back yard, a Davis Vantage Pro, and I upload to WeatherUnderground.
I have my HD-12 with NOAA, WeatherUnderground and CIMIS.
I notice that NOAA is way off and that the times that my RM updates from WeatherUnderground is VERY seldom, like once a day!
I upload to WU every 3 seconds, so my data is very current. Why does the RM update from WU so seldom, while NOAA is frequent?
I am going to try turning NOAA off as I don't know where NOAA is getting their data from, and it is not correct.
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I’ve also had the same problem for over a year now. Seems that it’s worse during the summer months. Presumably because it’s drier and hotter and RM’s forecast engine doesn’t adjust properly. Forecast for me as shown by RM is off in temperature by about 10-15deg and cloud cover prediction. Last year nearly all my plants and grass died because I had poorly assumed Rainachine would be smart.
I even have a PWS that updates to Weather Underground and I have WU feeding to RM.
The most recent change I’ve done is disable NOAA and let WU feed RM. A week later and the forecast still doesn’t look right.
Now I’ve defaulted to leaving the system operating with a constant irrigation setup, aka a dumb sprinkler controller.
Yes, I’ve reset and reinstalled the app on my phone and also cross checked settting via their web interface and fiddled around with all their settings. Yes of course the controller has the latest firmware.
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My problem went away. I dont know if it was changing my zipcode by one number to the town just north or me, or eventually some bug was corrected and the problem went away that actually solved the problem.
I noticed when I started typing my zipcode it comes up with a choice between my correct town or some place in France with I assume a similar foreign zipcode. Even tho I tried choosing my location via map, zipcode, etc it was always wrong for NOAA. My theory is that when rainmachine passed my location info to every weather service only NOAA was assuming I was in the foreign location maybe? So i went for a few months with NOAA off, then I tried using a zipcode for a town close to mine, and the problem went away (even with NOAA turned on). Then a few months later I had my unit services for a bad Wifi antenna and when I got it back I had to put my location in again and everything is working fine.
I just logged into my unit to see if my location was set using address, zipcode, or map click. I cant tell which was used but it has my street and town name. But now it tells you the lat and long of where it thinks you are. I dont think it did that years ago when I first had this problem.
I suggest you go into your machine;s settings with a web browser and see what your longitude and lat is, and cut and paste them into google maps and confirm your unit thinks it is where you actually are.
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