Need NOAA based observed actual measured rainfall data

Within the last few weeks I have learned that the RainMachine only gathers weather forecast data from NOAA. It does not gather observed actual measured rainfall from NOAA, which is data gathered by weather satellites and would be by far the most accurate way to get observed actual measured rainfall data.

Instead, the friendly folks on the RainMachine support team told me that in order to get actual observed rainfall that I have to add a nearby Personal Weather Station. This indicated that this would be the ideal set up because NOAA would tell the RainMachine what to expect in the following days so it can water less or more accurately (which is good) and the PWS from WUnderground to make corrections if the NOAA forecast is wrong.

So my suggestion for “Ideas and product enhancements” would be to allow the option to use NOAA data for both forecast data and actual observed rainfall. This would be the most accurate method and both are available on the NOAA site. That way we are relying on NOAA satellite data for both forecast and actual measured rainfall rather than relying on others to maintain their rain gauges and relying on a WUnderground station being close by.

Aaron Long May 10, 2019 20:13

In addition to this suggestion I would ask that you also allow manual override of the data when NOAA service is off. This can happen because you live too far away from the weather center or often the data is just simply corrupted in some respect.

Marc Kessler July 28, 2022 18:36

A few years back I wrote a scraper for the NOAA observed rainfall

https://github.com/mycon/rainmachine-developer-resources/blob/master/sdk-parsers/RMParserFramework/parsers/noaa-observed-parser.py

Original discussion thread:

https://support.rainmachine.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360031841794-Weather-Underground-public-station-actual-rainfall-data-Did-we-really-need-the-API-?page=1#community_comment_360012774374

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Need NOAA based observed actual measured rainfall data

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