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#I_can.E2.80.99t_find_my_data_files.21 for where else to look.
The today file is written to throughout the current day as any new High or Low for the day at reached. At the end of a day [either midnight, or 9am (or 10am) depending on your configuration and season], the today.ini file is rolled-over to become 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 close down and restart Cumulus during the day it will read these files at startup, so it can resume tracking extremes of the key parameters.
Normally you would not need to edit these files, however rarely 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. 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 attrbute name, an equals sign and a value). Blank lines canbe included for readability, they are ignored. All values have to be specified in the correct format, see example below.
Example today.ini file
[General] Date=29/04/2011 Timestamp=29/04/2011 11:50:00 [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=1.64999914169312 HeatingDegreeDays=5.34738397598267 CoolingDegreeDays=0 [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=2011-04-22 22:08 HourlyHigh=0 HHourlyTime=00:00 ConsecutiveRainDays=2 ConsecutiveDryDays=0 [ET] Annual=0 Startofday=0 [Humidity] Low=65 High=88 LTime=11:45 HTime=06:06 [Solar] SunshineHours=0 SunshineHoursToMidnight=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= LatestYearlyReport=
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 is stored in today.ini, but yesterday's RG11 rainfall 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.