On an unrelated topic, I'm a little annoyed with myself. I did some modifications to my sensor mount this evening. It's mounted on a 10-feet length of 1-inch EMT, strapped to the side of my backyard shed with tension mounts. I added a couple of hitch pins to the mast to 1) keep the pole from sliding in the event that the tension mounts loosened, 2) add a "servicing stop" so that the pole could be slid down to the appropriate height for servicing the sensor. In the midst of doing thing, I apparently jostled the sensor enough for it to record about a quarter inch of "rainfall." I just didn't think about it before hand; otherwise I would turned off the display and the bridge while I did the work. Lesson learned, I guess. 
Yes. That's a common problem. Some displays will allow you to clear such rainfall from jostling (which tips the rain buckets), other will not. The bridge does not have such a feature, so it's often best to turn it off during servicing.
The consoles are a different matter, however. Turning them off will not necessarily stop them from recording the "phantom rain".
That's because, for some unknown reason, the bridge and the consoles record rain differently.
The actual rain sensor transmits the value of a counter. When a console sees a change in the counter, it records the difference from the last counter reading as rainfall.
The bridge, however, does things a bit differently. It doesn't transmit the value of the counter, but rather the number of bucket tips that have occurred in the last 36 seconds. In a perfect world, there would be no difference, but it makes the bridge susceptible to losing data if your network or radio connection is less than perfect.
So, in short, the way to avoid "phantom rain" while servicing is to turn off the bridge. In the case of the console, hopefully you have the feature that lets you clear recent rain. If not, you just have to deal with it.
