My Tempest just went through a roughly 24-hr period of very peculiar wind reports. It started around 3 PM yesterday (Oct 2nd), reporting very stable southerly winds of about 8 mph. I didn’t even notice something was amiss until I noticed that there were no lulls - the reports were remarkably consistent (but not identical). Every few hours the reported wind would increase, sometimes with a change in direction. Overnight the reports were locked in around 20 mph (actual wind was nearly calm). Around noon there was another huge increase, to 40 mph, and then finally to 50 mph. After a few wild fluctuations, the wind reports then fairly abruptly seemed to return to normal a little after 3 PM this afternoon. I’ve attached an image of the return to normal. Because we’ve had rain off and on, I’ve been unable to get up on our (slippery) roof to see if there’s anything visually wrong with the sensor. I’m wondering if anyone can shed any light on this behavior.
About a month ago I too had some strange wind issues with a “wind failure” notification in my status section. I was getting wind reports inside of my house even. I had to reset everything on my home unit and everything seems to be working fine now on that unit. Just tonight I have the same issue on my other unit which is located 10 miles from me at my business. It is located on a roof and I’ll have to check on that tomorrow during daylight hours. Just try resetting everything and see if that works.
Just had a look at your station and it rained around that period. This smells like rain on plate issue. This is a know limitation for the wind sensors as rain drops can heavily influence the sensors. As you can see it dried out and all came back to normal.
I did a remote reboot, might solve it and spare you a Sunday climbing.
Thank you, Eric. Can you tell me anything more about the rain on the plate issue? I’ve had the Tempest for a couple months now, we’ve had lots of rain during this time, but I’ve never seen runaway wind reports of this sort before.
long history already that issue
the Tempest is now covered by a special coating that reduces this case but it can happen that during and after a shower droplets stay on the lower plate (gap where the wind is measured). If those are in direct line with the sensors it ‘deforms’ the signal and you get false readings. We saw cases where it drizzled for hours and hardly any wind resulting in those droplets. Sometimes it can happen when it rains hard in diagonal and the plate is soaked … in general the problems disappears as it dries out
Thank you so much… Seems to be back to normal now…