Running totals
Two ever-growing totals of all rain since setup. They exist for Home Assistant's long-term statistics: use them for daily, weekly, monthly or yearly rain sums. The other sensors are snapshots of a window and do not add up correctly over time.
| Sensor | Unit | Adds | Grows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Precipitation total | mm | each Precipitation previous hour once | hourly |
| Precipitation total daily | mm | each Precipitation yesterday once | daily |
Both have the state class total_increasing, so they work with Home
Assistant's long-term statistics, the statistics graph card and the
Utility Meter
helper.
Precipitation total
Adds each Precipitation previous hour value once: the
gauge-adjusted total of each clock hour. It is up to date within the hour, so
it also suits "how much rain since this morning" automations. This is the one
to use.
Home Assistant's statistics see each hour about half an hour after it ends (11:00–12:00 is added at about 12:28), so only the last hour of a day spills into the next one.
Precipitation total daily
Adds each Precipitation yesterday value once. Today's rain
only appears the next morning, and Home Assistant's statistics count it on
the day it was added, so each day's rain shows up under the following day.
Prefer Precipitation total unless you specifically want DWD's daily
analysis.
It is disabled by default on installs set up from 2026.11.0 on. Enable it on the entity's settings page if you need it; it starts counting from then. Installs that already had it keep it enabled.
On the two daylight-saving changeover days the 23:50 windows are 23 or 25 hours apart while each file covers 24 hours, so one hour is counted twice in spring and missed in autumn.
How they count
- Both start at 0 when the integration is set up, and keep their total across restarts.
- Each DWD release is counted once, however many times it is seen, and two equally wet hours are still two releases.
- A file without data for your grid cell adds nothing.
- They stay available while DWD is not publishing, because the total counted so far is still correct. The option Show "unavailable" when the data is out of date does not apply to them.
| Attribute | Meaning |
|---|---|
counted_until | End of the newest DWD window included in the total, ISO-8601 UTC; null until the first file arrives |
Missed hours are added late
If Home Assistant was offline, or DWD failed to publish for a while, the
missed files are fetched in the background on the next update and added
late. The list of missed files is saved with the total, so a restart in the
middle resumes it, and a file that fails to download is tried again with
every new one, for as long as DWD keeps it: 48 hours for
Precipitation total, and only the day before for
Precipitation total daily. Only files DWD no longer serves are left out,
and the log says so.
Rain added late counts in Home Assistant's statistics at the time it was
added, not the hour it fell. counted_until does not move back for it.
Example: rain this month
A Utility Meter
helper that resets monthly, in configuration.yaml:
utility_meter:
rain_this_month:
source: sensor.home_precipitation_total
cycle: monthly
You can create the same helper in the UI under Settings > Devices & services > Helpers > Create helper > Utility Meter.
Why there are two
They are separate entities rather than one with a source option, because
switching the source of a total_increasing sensor would make it jump. See
ADR 0005 for the reasoning.