Topic: 2018 Davis tipping bucket 28% error

[archae86]

As to the Rainwise, it was also a tipper and seemed to me to share the Davis tipper problem of underreporting at high rain rates.  Using the CocoRahs as "truth" it seemed to have that problem somewhat worse than Davis.

Mind you, here in New Mexico, though we have not very much total rain for the year, we get some of it at very high rates.

I had some trouble with receivers for the Rainwise (I had two, so could tell if one was not receiving), and eventually I got no signal at all.  Don't know whether the transmitter or receiver failed last, but took it out of service after about 15 years or so of use.

The other thing I did not like was that the receivers were battery eaters.  The original one took D cells, and could not get a year of service out of them.  The later receiver must have lower power requirements considerably, and used AA cells, but again could not get a year out of them.  Also there were separate coin cells for the displays, which had some odd life behavior.

I think there is a group here who hold Rainwise to be inherently superior to Davis, but in my personal service this did not seem to be the case.

[ocala]

I have had the the new spoon tipper roughly a year and a half.
After several tropical storms and summer rain events I can say the new tipper has never under reported. But during heavy rain events it almost always over reports. Been that way since it was installed. By the way this is comparing it to a coco gauge mounted at the same height on a 4x4 6ft high with their respective openings about 11 inches apart.
Really, even during light to moderate events the two gauges rarely match up exactly. But the new gauge performs much better then the old one for sure so it's a definite improvement.
I wish someone could come out with a gauge that could weigh the actual water. Now that would be something that could be a game changer. I talking about something like a coco cylinder that could be weighed as it fills up. Don't think you could establish a rain rate with something like that though .
Just my 2 cents

Quoting myself here. Just an FYI.
The Davis gauge finally underreported. On Monday it read 1.27 but the coco read 1.31. And my total from Hurricane Milton was 7.17 while the coco read 7.28.