It is raining! and It has stopped raining! notification questions

Question on this feature - I have my Rachio connected to my existing Irritrol rain sensor, and I am getting a very delayed notification from the Rachio that it is raining or stopped raining. In some cases, +12 hours after rainfall has started or stopped. Since my station is connected my PWS/Netatmo station, shouldn’t it be using this data to provide me the notifications vs. my hard-wired rain sensor? How often is the Rachio polling the PWS system for updates - because via the Netatmo station, I can receive almost real-time conditions which should then be reported to PWS on a pretty regular frequency, correct?

Thanks for the help on this one!

is it taking 12 hours for your rain sensor to detect the configured amount of rainfall?

my rainbird w2 is delayed but i think it is ok. it takes about 15 minutes of HEAVY rain to accumulate enough rainfall to trip the sensor.

can you test yoiur sensor? can you verify the accumulation rate for the day it was 12 hours delayed and know that it should have tripped earlier based on your sensor’s setting?

i dont know what their polling rate is, but regardless of a pws, i like my rachio telling me that my external sensor has tripped, it lets me know it is still working.

I noticed that the “its wet out there” notifications come to me at 3AM eastern time regardless of when the rain itself falls. This is only with a PWS and not a rain sensor on the system itself. I was looking at this just now as I had an inch plus of rain in the last 2 hours.


Yea I don’t notice any message until a schedule is skipped (always see the pair in the morning), I have had dry messages come in mid afternoon on several occasions, my guess is sandbagging the message to work around Rain Sensor Messages but that is a stretch.

There could be an issue with the PWS the system is choosing (closest). My rule of thumb is that if you don’t have a PWS installed, I wouldn’t enable that setting. We see countless PWS with bad data. can help if you have any other questions regarding PWS. Thanks!

@ruzickab It is raining! and It has stopped raining messages are only sent if you have a physical rain sensor installed which it sounds like you do. Any time your physical sensor is triggered, it will stop, or not allow, any scheduled schedules to run. When the rain sensor is triggered it sends a ‘It is raining!’ message. When it is not triggered (rain drys out) it sends a ‘It has stopped raining’ message.

1 hour before any of your schedules are supposed to run, we have process called weather intelligence (I call it virtual rain sensor). This article has a good explanation of what it does:

Please let us know if you have any other questions or feedback.


@franz, thanks for the additional information. May I suggest then that the notification message (maybe in the future 2.0 release) is altered from “It’s raining” and “It’s stopped raining” to something more along the lines of “Rain sensor activated” and “Rain sensor deactivated/cleared”? It gets a bit confusing when my Netatmo registers a good amount of measurable rainfall and notifies me hours before my physical rain sensor notifcations from the Rachio. And with Weather Intelligence and my local rain gauge via Netatmo gear, my system probably more reliably triggers skipping a cycle or halting schedules than my physical rain sensor…


@ruzickab Changed to Rain sensor activated/deactivated. Will show up on next cloud release.


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This is great! Much better “notification”…

Thanks for making this change.


I like the change too - could we have something customised for soil sensors?

At this moment, it is not only the scheduled schedule which is not allowed but even a manual one. Could this be allowed?

@franz, appreciate the upcoming change! I think this will benefit a ton of users and remove confusion from the notification. Love the fact that you guys truly take the community’s feedback and quickly implement changes/improvements!

@franz, one other question on your Watersmart link above in the thread. I’ve thus far only had my Rachio during warm weather and so I’ve only seen the 'It’s wet out there" e-mail notifications from Weather Intelligence, letting me know a scheduled run has been skipped due to rainy weather. When it get’s cold again in November/December in Texas, will I start to get “It’s cold out there” e-mail notifications from Weather Intelligence as it detects below freezing weather?

this is a great change :blush: I may have complained a lot about this too…

Yes, if the temperature is 32 degrees or less when the schedule is supposed to run, we skip.

If you need it more configurable, IFTTT recipe can be used (if you want a different temperature threshold).


Yes, a defect we need to fix :wink:

I’ve just started seeing the new notifications in the last two days. And it all makes sense! :slight_smile: Thanks for taking the input and implementing so quickly!!!


they are not the fart, they are the shit!

Firmware patch released to allow for manual override of the sprinklers in the event the rain sensor is active when manual operation of the sprinklers is desired.

Thanks, I saw an other post with the same info. Will check as soon as my soil sensor is activated.