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, as held in memory while Cumulus is running, are constantly re-written to today.ini. 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. Many are written as a new line appended onto dayfile.txt and most become values and timestamps in yesterday.ini; then a new today.ini is created. The three files have a few differences in content, so rolling-over does involve a little editing work. When Cumulus is left running, a daily backup of all the files is created as part of this rollover.

If you restart Cumulus during the day it will read the today.ini file at startup, so it can resume tracking extremes of the key parameters starting from latest stored values in today.ini. Note that, if your weather station type supports it, Cumulus will update today.ini with revised highs and lows as it processes the station's memory; and if necessary it will do a roll-over as it processes the readings for the relevant time (this roll-over process takes a bit longer to create the daily backup than that when Cumulus is left running). As explained on support forum, there can be problems if Cumulus is started/stopped just before or just after (i.e. close to) its roll-over time. Equally, if you close Cumulus during the day it will have written 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 rainfall in today.ini within Cumulus

This applied to Cumulus 1 and Cumulus MX. Both contain an editor for 'today's rain'.

• You may wish to edit the rain data if there has been a quirk in your weather station sensor for rain (or in figure 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 via Today's rain screen on the Edit menu.
  • This edit purely changes the Start= line within the '[rain]' section, i.e. changes the Total rainfall counter (content depends on weather station type, might be rainfall total so far this year; it is not intended to be useful in itself, it may vary for no apparent reason) value that is stored within today.ini.
  • Consequently, using this feature creates a sudden increase or decrease in the 'Total rainfall counter (content depends on weather station type, might be rainfall total so far this year)' figure stored the next time Cumulus updates its log file for the current month.
  • You still need to manually edit (using an external text editor) the other parameters within that [Rain] section to correct the other rain statistics held in 'today.ini':
    • last tip time-stamp ("LastTip=")
    • highest rainfall rate so far today and time-stamp ("High=" and "HTime=")
    • hourly high amount and time-stamp ("HourlyHigh=" and "HHourlyTime=")
    • consecutive wet/dry days ("ConsecutiveRainDays=" and "ConsecutiveDryDays=") - remember these counts are to last roll-over, they exclude today
  • If you do edit any parameter values remember to ensure the replacement is in exactly same format as before (whether integers, real numbers or a particular format for time-stamps)
  • This edit does not affect any derived rainfall values (such as totals for the month or year that are displayed (and output via web-tags)), unless you subsequently close and restart Cumulus the same day to force recalculation of the longer period totals, and to ensure that dayfile.txt is updated correctly at next roll-over.
  • Although rainfall since midnight is stored in the last field of the Cumulus log file for the current month, manually editing there will not help as Cumulus does not read it from there. If you want to correct it there because you have processes that read this file, then remember you can only safely edit (using a specialist CSV editor, a good text editor, or a programmer's editor like 'Notepad++) that file with Cumulus stopped, as Cumulus demands full access to this file for periodic updating.

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.

Composite Example of 'today.ini' file

The minimum content for this file is the "[General]" section. See FAQ here for the single reason why you might want to remove all other sections from your file.

Note: This is an example made up of composites that will not all be present in an actual file; some parts of this example 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.

• This composite contains time-stamp formats used by Cumulus 1.x.y;
• Cumulus MX users should refer to the support forum for how dates and times are stored differently (because MX is writing all time-stamps in ISO format within today.ini).

[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.