Precipitation field in OpenWeatherMap API 2 5

Question

I'm using the Open Weather Map API for weather forecast. Current available version is 2.5 Here is a snippet of XML

...
<time day="2013-09-07">
<symbol number="500" name="light rain" var="10d"/>
<precipitation value="2.5" type="rain"/>
<windDirection deg="8" code="N" name="North"/>
<windSpeed mps="1.16" name="Calm"/>
<temperature day="14.56" min="12.79" max="14.56" night="12.79" eve="14.56" morn="14.56"/>
<pressure unit="hPa" value="973.09"/>
<humidity value="98" unit="%"/>
<clouds value="broken clouds" all="68" unit="%"/>
</time>
...

Does anyone know the unit of the field precipitation ?

2.5 are mm of rain? perhaps a probability?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The data for upload in millimeters for both snow and rain is described in their protocol for weather station data transmission. Precipitation volume, not chance, is stated in their JSON API v.1.0 (prior one).

Overall, it's the volume of precipitation in millimeters.
Also,

Forecast.io provides precipitation likelihood with a forecast (but not history, as far as I'm aware).

{"time":1421080800,"precipIntensity":0.0401,"precipIntensityError":0.0099,"precipProbability":0.47,"precipType":"rain"}

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