WATERWATCH PRO'S RAPIDRAIN FEATURE

WaterWatch PRO receives a high-resolution, high-accuracy rainfall map file for the entire U.S. from NOAA each hour. 

This data comprises radar, corrected by over 20,000 gauges, surface observations, satellite data, and computer models. After finding your location in that file, we store the hourly data and compute the running 24-hour accumulated rainfall value. 

These values show up in the View Precip History tab for each location monitored in your account.

The time needed to collect and process this NOAA file introduces an unavoidable delay in text and email notifications for the 24-hour accumulated value. For example, if it begins raining at 8 am, the NOAA file WaterWatch PRO uses isn’t available until 9 am. Thus, it takes us approximately 20 minutes to process this vast file, make the comparisons, and notify clients. 

In this example, a client would receive a notification of a threshold exceedance around 9:25 am. Until the data is available, you see the words “Processing” in the View Precip History display,  as shown in the example on the right in the diagram above.

WaterWatch PRO’s standard 24-hour notification is satisfactory for a client whose needs are not time-sensitive. For example, many do not urgently need to act based on rainfall events. 

RAPID-RAIN provides a faster notification of rainfall for those needing immediate action to pull water quality samples, etc. 

One significant difference is that the data used by RAPID-RAIN is raw data from NOAA radar sites. Therefore, it does not include gauge correction and other inputs used by the standard WaterWatch PRO 24-hour notification. 

While the data from both methods comes from NOAA, users may experience some minor differences in values.