In order to construct an APRS packet with weather data, people use the 'r' rain identifier, which is defined as "last hour" or "Rain per last 60 minutes", i.e. the total rainfall in the last hour. aprs.fi properly does interpret the 'r' rain identifier as "inches during last 1 hour". To my knowledge, there is no rain identifier for the rate of rain in the last hour (c.f. http://www.aprs.org/aprs11/spec-wx.txt)
Obviously, rate and total are two different things, so in order to correctly send the "inches during last 1 hour" via APRS, the API should provide a additional "hourlyrainin" which is "inches during last 1 hour", along with the existing "hourlyrainin - Hourly Rain Rate, in/hr".
Today, the API returns "hourlyrainin - Hourly Rain Rate, in/hr", i.e. the hourly rate of rain fall (c.f. https://github.com/ambient-weather/api-docs/wiki/Device-Data-Specs).
In order to construct an APRS packet with weather data, people use the 'r' rain identifier, which is defined as "last hour" or "Rain per last 60 minutes", i.e. the total rainfall in the last hour. aprs.fi properly does interpret the 'r' rain identifier as "inches during last 1 hour". To my knowledge, there is no rain identifier for the rate of rain in the last hour (c.f. http://www.aprs.org/aprs11/spec-wx.txt)
Obviously, rate and total are two different things, so in order to correctly send the "inches during last 1 hour" via APRS, the API should provide a additional "hourlyrainin" which is "inches during last 1 hour", along with the existing "hourlyrainin - Hourly Rain Rate, in/hr".