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I have recently installed a Davis Vantage Pro2 in the harbour here in Lyme Regis. It has mostly worked very well but twice now the rain gauge has suddenly gone wild and I have been trying to find out what could be causing it. The symtoms are that suddenly the rainfall starts incrementing constantly (see chart below) at about 7"/hr. The weather station connects to the Vantage Pro console via a wireless link. The chart is actually from Weather Display live but I have checked back at the console and confirmed the same rainfall has been recorded there. After a while it suddenly goes back to normal. I will be taking a look at the rain bucket in the next few days but it's not easy to get at (mounted on the harbour master's office roof). So I wondered if anyone else had ever experienced this before or had any ideas what I should look out for. Of course when it goes wrong all the cumulative yearly, monthly, daily figures become skewed and it is a real pain getting them all corrected. The weather station can be viewd at www.lymeregis.org/webcams/live-weather-station/ (there is a non-flash version for iPad etc.). Many thanks

Hi, I have noticed that my Davis Vantage Pro2 the dew point and humidity are often a bit higher than local stations and the MetO one at Exeter Airport which I look at here. (There seems to be 2 stations there, the normal 'airport' one you see on XCWeather and this one which can be a bit different) This seems to happen more when the dew point is not too close to the temperature, so yesterday with relatively high humidity this may not so be apparent, though there can still be a 1C or so difference. I have noticed often 1-2C, sometimes more like 3C difference. There is also a new Davis Vantage Vue on Weather Underground literally about a mile from me that also shows 1-2C lower than mine. For example when I checked at 3pm on Wednesday Exeter's temp/dew was 22.4/12.0C where as mine was 22.4/14.5C (the temp happens to be exactly the same). I've also made checks through days and mine is consistently at least 1C, often 2C higher. The biggest difference I saw was Exeter's dew point at 8.4C, and mine at 12.9C, a 4.5C difference. This was also when the wind was a NW'erly (blowing from Exeter Airport towards me) and there wasn't a local phenomena like a sea breeze. When this happens it can also fluctuate rapidly, sometimes by 2-3C. Could this occur naturally with pockets of more moist air? I've probably rambled on enough now so being slightly obsessed with accuracy, what I am wondering here is, is there any way to check the readings or calibrate/fix this? I'm assuming there is not a 'set' inaccuracy throughout its range so you can't just apply a blanket 6% humidity correction for example. This of course means my high/low humidity and dew point records would be off, as would my (maybe not such a) record high dew point of 20.0C on the 27th of June, so I want to be reasonably accurate here. I replaced the temp/hum sensor in August 2009 when it went faulty, so any issue would date back to then at the earliest or it may well have 'drifted' at a later date. I could buy a replacement temp/hum sensor but I'm not sure if it's worth the money for this and I definitely want to make sure there’s no easier fixes first. This post has ended up a bit longer than I expected! if you get this far It would be interesting if anyone has ideas? Thanks for any replies.