I am trying to use METAR data from AviationWeather.gov to programmatically collect hourly rainfall data. This Wiki says that the first field in the report should be "type" - either METAR or SPECI. METARs are sent every hour, SPECIs are sent sporadically under certain conditions. The problem is that the AviationWeather.gov reports are missing that first field, so I can't tell the difference between METAR and SPECI reports. I care because I can only get reliable cumulative Rainfall data from the METAR reports.
What am I missing?