«The weather always gets me wrong.» In the woods that's not a complaint - it's a technically exact description of how the models work. And that's why in MushScout, you have the final say on the rain that falls.
Because the weather gets it wrong exactly where you go mushrooming
The models work on a grid, and each cell is kilometers wide. Inside a single Apennine cell there are the valley floor, the northern slope and the ridge: three places that in September can receive three completely different rains, and for which there is only one number.
It doesn't matter much on the temperature. It weighs heavily on the rain, because a summer storm dumps twenty millimeters on one side and zero on the opposite side. And the rain is the trigger: getting it wrong means getting the entire forecast for that forest wrong.
A number that tells you how big the problem is
In the same forest, in the same period, the forecasts gave 55 mm. The weather archive - that is, the reconstruction of what actually fell - counted for it 148.
With 55 mm that forest remains closed and the score does not move. With 148 he is ready. On such a difference you decide whether to go out or stay at home. And this is the reason why, over the past few days, the app does not look at the forecasts from back then but at the archive of what actually fell.
However, the other problem remains, that of the large cell: not even the archive knows that hailstorms fell on your ridge while nothing fell in the village. You serve there.
How to correct it
There is a box in the tab for each place Fix the rain. The tour consists of three steps:
- choose the day you want to talk about;
- indicate how much water actually fell;
- save, and the score of that place takes it into account immediately.
It can also be done from the exit form, which is often the most convenient moment: you go home, open today's tour and while you have in mind what the terrain was like, you also adjust the data.
How much has fallen, if you don't have a rain gauge
You don't need the instrument: you need an order of magnitude. Some references that are valid in the woods:
- a half-hour drizzle that barely wets the litter: a few millimeters;
- a continuous rain for half a day, of those that penetrate: around the winds;
- a strong storm that flows away leaving rivulets: many millimeters but little absorbed - if you tell it like that, know that it's worth less than it seems.
An approximate number but yours is better than a precise figure taken ten kilometers away.
The correction applies only to your seat
What you write does not change the weather in the area for other users and does not appear in any bulletin: it changes the history of that forest of yours. From then on, that place will have a more correct prediction.
And it is consistent with the rest: places don't come out of the phone, so neither do their corrections.
Because it pays to do it, and it's not hard
The fix goes into the place history, so it works twice: it fixes today's score and improves the comparison of all future seasons. It's the same mechanism why the app learns from your exits — with the difference that here ten seconds are enough and you don't even need to be gone.
It is worth doing this especially in the two cases in which the model makes the most mistakes: summer storms, which are patchy, and snowfalls or ridge rains, which a large cell averages out.
The starting weather data comes from Open-Weather, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Frequently asked questions
Is Premium needed to correct rain?
No. The correction is also done in the free plan, on all the places you have saved.
If I make a mistake entering it, can I fix it?
Yes, you can do it as many times as you want: the last one you put in is always worth it.
How far back can I correct?
On the days that count for the forecast, i.e. the previous weeks. For porcini mushrooms it is the window that really counts: the useful rain is that of two or three weeks before.
Does my correction change the weather for others too?
No. It only applies to your seat and remains in your history.
Why doesn't the app directly use the forecast for the past few days?
Because forecasts say what was expected, not what happened. For the past few days the app uses the weather archive: in the same forest the difference between the two was 55 mm versus 148.
