Probe for Windows Help: Forecast Rain and ET

Probe For Windows can use forecast rain and evapotranspiration (ET) when calculating required irrigation, both for the next irrigation and also for the whole season

The total amount of predicted rain in the next 7 days can be calculated for each site, and the value is left in variable %ForecastRain%.
This could be used in an email...
%ForecastRain% mm is predicted in the next %dripdays% days

Or output on a graph report (.gpt), or a text report (.rpt), or on the screen screen (.spt)

The predicted rainfalls will also be shown on the time graph if GraphMenu/Options/Local tab: Time Graph Plot delivered rain: (graph style='Rain/Predicted' [ID=80])
Predicted effective rainfalls (over FULL = runoff) will only be plotted if they are different from the forecast amount (graph style='Rain/Predicted/Effective' [ID=79])

Forecast ET will be used if schedule on ReadingsMenu/Predictions with Forecast. The ET daily value will be shown as teh Schedule DWUhere:

The value of ET will be sjown on teh grah if ???d

Each Region has three Rainfall Scenario's.

A Rainfall Scenario can be either...

1. Historical - a weather file (that includes rain), with actual dd/mm/yyyy dates
2. Generic - a file for various weather eg 'High', 'Low', 'Average', with dates dd mmm (no year)
3. Forecast - a file that includes forecast rain amounts with actual dd/mm/yyyy dates

Each site is allocated to a Region, and the region has Rainfall Scenario's - see ReadingsMenu/Scheduling tab: Options
Each grower can also be allocated to a region - see FarmMenu/Edit tab: General
Users will be asked if they want to set all sites for the grower to the same region

ProbeMenu/Rainfalls

tab: Regions

• Only active Regions can be selected for a site
• 3 rainfall scenarios can be selected for each region
• Scenario 1 (Main) is used for scheduling, and the 7 day total is left in %rainfall%
• Scenario 2,3 are for calculating total water required for all sites, for different weather scenarios
  see ProbeMenu/Update tab: Season Scheduling

---

tab: Rainfalls

• File: examplehigh.ran - a comma-delimited text file with rain amounts
• Date Column: the column in the file that has the date
• Adjust dates: If a 'historical' weather file is being used, the date in the file could be for a previous season
  if , the date will be adjusted so that it is within the current season (??)
• Rain Column: the column in the data file that has the rain amount
• Total-by-day: Some weather files will have a value every hour
  if a daily total rainfall will be calculated
• Header lines: the number of header lines if the file that should be skipped - default = 1
• Minimum: rainfalls below this value will be ignored
• Units: the units of the data in the data file - mm or ins. (All internal calculations are in metric)

---

tab: Values

• Displays the rainfall events and the values found in the file
• This tab is just for checking - the calculated %rainfall% amount for each site will be from the date of the last reading, for the following 7 days
• A period can be specified for calculating total rain in the period
• Rainfalls found in the period will be highlighted
• The total amount in the period will be shown
• Load All - re-load all rainfall files to update values

---

tab: Download

The rainfall files are read from the shared\ folder (eg: shared\examplehigh.ran)
These files can also be downloaded from a web site

Method:

• http The file must be on a publically available server eg.
  Server: http://www.rsne.com.au/ftp/examplehigh.ran
• Open Weather: to be implemented
• Irrimax The forecast file is downloaded from Sentek Irrimax
  Server: Name of the Irrimax database

Download download file for this scenario

Irrimax download requires the start date of the forecast, and a key (supplied by Sentek)

Download All download files for all scenario's

At startup - download all active files at Start-Up

---

tab: files

Name and location of files that contains the list of Regions and then list of Rainfall Scenarios
Defaults: shared\regions.txt, shared\rainfall.txt

'3.1.211
' attempt to append downloaded data to existing file - abandoned
' file re-downloaded if file date is different
' option download from Now-2 days note: saved in INI, not forecast file
' CalculateTotal - ET - use fractional days
'  append text to %Forecast% [5 days]