Sky consistently underreports rainfall

I am in Wagga Wagga, southern New South Wales, Australia. The very small community that I am in is full of retired farmers - each with a physical rain gauge hanging off the back fence. At most, these rain gauges are 60 metres apart. I have one too. Next to my physical rain gauge, I have my WeatherFlow Sky unit on its pole. I’ve had it since Jun 2016. The Sky unit has consistently underreported when compared to the surrounding physical rain gauges. (And believe me, all the farmers compare.) We’ve been in a long drought.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a good rain event. We had three good falls of about 20mm (0.8 inch) on each of three consecutive days - according to the rain gauges. Sky reported just 15mm (0.6 inch) for each fall. Yes, these were ’showers’, ie, rain from Cu-nimbus clouds and therefore very patchy, with extremely heavy rain in short bursts and a good bit of wind. In this case, the physical rain gauges agreed fairly closely with each other - but not with Sky.

The farmers were very enthusiastic about the Sky unit. No longer.

I’m as retired statistician. I thought I would report in.

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Rain seem off (auto-calibration system not yet deployed)