Today.ini
Introduction
The files today.ini and yesterday.ini are used by Cumulus to store the Highs and Lows (and their timestamps) for key parameters as reached on each of the two days. These files are normally located in the Data sub-folder of the path where your Cumulus.exe is installed. See FAQ on location of data log files for where else to look.
The highs and lows are held in memory while Cumulus is running. At the end of a day [either midnight, or 9am (or 10am) depending on your configuration and season], the final values and timestamps written to today.ini file are rolled-over to become values and timestamps in yesterday.ini; and a new today.ini is created. From the examples below you can see that the two files have a few differences in content, so rolling-over does involve a little editing work.
If you restart Cumulus during the day it will read both these files at startup, so it can resume tracking extremes of the key parameters starting from latest stored values in today.ini. Equally, if you close Cumulus during the day it will write the final values for highs and lows and their timestamps to today.ini as part of the close down process.
Dealing with rogue values
The today file is written to throughout the current day as any new High or Low for the day at reached. If your weather station reports a rogue value, an incorrect update to the High or Low may result, but details of that update should be in the Diags, so look there to see what correction will be required to eliminate the rogue value. Normally you would not need to edit today.ini, as if you wait until the next day, Cumulus provides (with its Edit menu) an easy way to amend the stored extremes for this month, this year, monthly records, and all-time. The wrong figures may be displayed on the yesterday screen for this next day, but yesterday.ini can be edited more easily!
Notes:
- If you do decide to edit 'today.ini' outside Cumulus, you must close Cumulus down first!
- Don't try to edit 'yesterday.ini' within a few minutes before or after Cumulus performs a rollover (either at rollover time or on restarting if it was not running at rollover time).
Editing today.ini within Cumulus
You may wish to edit the rain data if there has been a quirk in your weather station reporting during the day and the figure is abnormally inflated (or indeed under-reported). The stored rainfall today start count value in today.ini may be edited within Cumulus via Today's rain screen on the Edit menu. This edit does not affect any false derived rainfall values for the month or year, unless you subsequently close and restart Cumulus the same day to force recalculation of the longer period totals.
Editing today.ini or yesterday.ini outside Cumulus
If the rogue value is not rainfall, then you might need to edit today.ini or yesterday.ini using an external editor. Note: If you do edit either of these files, you must close Cumulus down first!
The files are text files, so edit using any plain text editor. The format consists of a number of sections (section title is delimited by [ ]), and a number of properties (consisting of attribute name, an equals sign and a value). Blank lines can be included for readability, they are ignored in these .ini type log files. All values have to be specified in the correct format, see example below.
Example today.ini file
Note: This is an example made up of composites, not an actual file, some parts of this file will be specific to particular makes of weather station e.g. the Davis ET and Solar blocks in the middle, and the sync lines for Fine Offset shown at the end.
[General] Date=29/09/2012 Timestamp=29/09/2012 11:50:00 CurrentYear=2012 CurrentMonth=9 CurrentDay=13 [Wind] Speed=10.7008972167969 SpTime=10:09 Gust=22.0114517211914 Time=08:42 Bearing=90 Direction=E Windrun=63.1526298522949 DominantWindBearing=317 DominantWindBearingMinutes=1041 DominantWindBearingX=-3914.11743164063 DominantWindBearingY=4215.82763671875 [Temp] Low=8.30000019073486 LTime=01:16 High=16.8999996185303 HTime=11:41 Total=7500.697265625 Samples=714 ChillHours=3147.15673828125 HeatingDegreeDays=5.34738397598267 CoolingDegreeDays=0.502222061157227 [Pressure] Low=1014.89996337891 LTime=11:13 High=1018.79998779297 HTime=00:06 [Rain] High=0 HTime=00:00 Start=1923.59997558594 Yesterday=0 LastTip=2012-09-14 10:48 HourlyHigh=0 HHourlyTime=00:00 ConsecutiveRainDays=2 ConsecutiveDryDays=0 RG11Today=20 [Humidity] Low=65 High=88 LTime=11:45 HTime=06:06 [ET] Annual=1148.2578125 Startofday=1147.24182128906 [Humidity] Low=59 High=96 LTime=09:35 HTime=14:47 [Solar] SunshineHours=1.08333301544189 SunshineHoursToMidnight=5.80002069473267 HighSolarRad=1048 HighSolarRadTime=09:41 HighUV=7.40000009536743 HighUVTime=09:41 SunStart=0 [HeatIndex] High=16.8999996185303 HTime=11:41 [AppTemp] Low=5.0417857170105 LTime=01:30 High=15.0359125137329 HTime=11:52 [WindChill] Low=6.39816427230835 LTime=01:30 [Dewpoint] Low=5.30104923248291 LTime=00:52 High=10.7219848632813 HTime=11:38 [NOAA] LatestMonthlyReport=NOAAMOSep2012.txt LatestYearlyReport=NOAAYR2012.txt [FineOffset] FOSensorClockTime=41530.7999836458 FOStationClockTime=41530.8056879514
Example yesterday.ini
See Average_temperature for one key transformation between today.ini and yesterday.ini, no ET parameters are retained, plus there are some wind and some rain parameters not copied from today.ini to yesterday.ini.
NOTE: Yesterday's total rainfall from weather station is stored in today.ini, but yesterday's total rainfall from RG-11 sensor is stored in yesterday.ini.
[General] Date=28/04/2011 [Wind] Speed=7.2 SpTime=09:00 Gust=15.9 Time=12:15 Bearing=315 Direction=NW Windrun=35.3391151428223 DominantWindBearing=230 [Temp] Low=5.6 LTime=05:34 High=21.0 HTime=14:46 HeatingDegreeDays=3.76118206977844 CoolingDegreeDays=0.702986478805542 AvgTemp=12.4447975158691 [Pressure] Low=29.72 LTime=09:00 High=29.85 HTime=22:12 [Rain] High=1.2 HTime=00:34 HourlyHigh=0.899999976158142 HHourlyTime=02:04 RG11Yesterday=0 [Humidity] Low=49 High=99 LTime=14:34 HTime=00:34 [Solar] SunshineHours=0 HighSolarRad=0 HighSolarRadTime=09:00 HighUV=0 HighUVTime=09:00 [HeatIndex] High=21 HTime=14:46 [AppTemp] Low=3.98110413551331 LTime=05:34 High=21.0052318572998 HTime=15:50 [WindChill] Low=5.59999990463257 LTime=05:34 [Dewpoint] Low=5.4555492401123 LTime=05:34 High=11.6547174453735 HTime=09:03
Cross-references for explanations of key parameters
Bearing and Direction, Windrun;
Temp, Total and Samples, Humidity, Heating degree days, Cooling degree days, AppTemp, Heat index, wind chill, Chill hours, Dewpoint;
Rain, ConsecutiveRainDays, ConsecutiveDryDays;
NOAA.