Has anyone written an app that monitors the outdoor conditions and notifies you of imminent rain? Like, something that watches for the pressure drops, the cloud cover, the wind speed (I don't know, I'm not a weather man) and then tries to predict whether you are going to have rain in the next...5 mins...10 mins? If so, would you mind to share the attributes you look for? ETA: Or, if you know enough about the weather and AW to know what attributes to look for, can you share them? I can build the app, I just don't know what attributes to look for.
I used to use a Dark Sky API that I would load into Tasker (like Hubitat apps but for your phone) and it did a decent job.
Interesting, an AI Forecast Weather App.... The internet is full of weather predictors and they are right 50% of the time...
As you know, there's a bunch of factors which interact in dynamic ways to produce rain: I'll start with a few attributes since it is not straight forward. Hence why professional meteorologists hedge their daily forecasts with percentages and use uncertainty words like; likely, probable, might, could, scattered, etc...
Humidity/Dewpoint. Air itself can hold a certain amount of air. You can inject more and more water into air and it'll absorb it. However, once you reach 100% saturation, then it'll precipitate out, in the form of liquid water — rain!
Cooling/Lapse rate. Air cools as you go up in height. The atmosphere's air is heated by the hot earth surface after sun heating. Rain can only come from clouds' water vapour. Another way to condense water is to cool the air, as cold air can hold less water (think, tropics = humid). So, rain formation can also be expedited if the cooling is quick - or, if the temperature drops faster with height.
Particulates. If air is saturated, it'll only form water droplets if they have something to 'cling' onto, so things like dust, smoke, etc. are the sort to promote this.
Barometric pressure: I am not sure how much or fast a change in pressure makes it more probable that it will rain.
Temperature
Dew Point
Wind Speed/Direction
Cloud Density/Composition
Check out https://windy.com as well - they have a great way of visualizing this with the airgram info for a forecast as well as being able to show the matching sounding forecast.
Rainfall is primarily caused by the process of condensation, where atmospheric water vapor cools and condenses into liquid water droplets that become heavy enough to fall as rain. This process is influenced by several factors, including air pressure, temperature, and moisture.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Condensation:
Water vapor in the atmosphere condenses into liquid water when it cools. This cooling can happen due to various factors, including rising air that expands and cools (convectional rainfall), or air moving over cooler surfaces.
Air Pressure:
Differences in air pressure play a crucial role in lifting moist air, which is necessary for condensation and rainfall. Low-pressure systems cause air to rise, while high-pressure systems cause air to sink.
Temperature:
Warmer air can hold more water vapor than cooler air. As warm, moist air rises and cools, it loses its capacity to hold water vapor, causing condensation.
Moisture:
The amount of water vapor in the air is a key factor in determining how much rain can fall. High humidity leads to more water vapor in the air, which can lead to more intense rainfall.
Wind Patterns:
Wind direction and speed can influence cloud formation and precipitation. Mountainous areas, for example, can create orographic precipitation by forcing moist air to rise over the terrain.
Haha, yeah. The weatherman just gives predictions for the area. I'm looking for something for right in my backyard.
Thanks for all of this information. I'll see what I can come up with.
Not sure what Dark Sky used, but you could enter your coordinates and it would give you a certain percentage of having rain in the next 5/10/15 minutes. I had an app that would watch that attribute and when it hit a certain percentage, my phone would alert me.
Hey Kurt. Just downloaded your app and started testing it out. I like the fact that you can change the polling frequency (the other one doesn't seem to have that ability). Are you able to update the polling frequency through a rule? I see that I can manually refresh, but I would prefer to change the frequency instead of manually refreshing. I would like to set it up with a somewhat infrequent polling interval but then increase the polling under certain conditions.
Thanks @claywhitenack for the feedback and a suggestion for a new feature.
I will look into your request over the next few days as time permits. I will add this as a device driver 'command' to the main AWS console device. The polling states would be pre-defined list and align with the same polling frequencies that are in the AWS application preferences.
Yes, that would work perfectly! Appreciate the response!
BTW, your app is far superior to the other one I am (and soon to be WAS) using. Much more lightweight and snappy. No offense to the other one, but building rules with the other one takes a long time because of how long it takes to load the various attributes.
The only other thing I see that I would suggest (and it is a minor thing) is the solar radiation attribute returns "null" on my rules. I think it is because it is expecting a number and you have the W/m included. Maybe that is throwing it off? It's OK, because I just switched to using illuminance which is the same data point. The other app had illuminance and solar radiation as different values...not sure where that data was coming from.
A new AWS version with your suggestions and bug fix has been posted in HPM. You should be able to check for a HPM upgrade and then you can use Rules to change the polling frequency from the available device command.
The setPollingInterval command takes an integer value in minutes and must be one of the following:
