From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-anomaly-maps
To put last month’s rainfall into perspective, it is worth comparing to one of the wettest months in the past – November 1929.
As we know, the UK as a whole was not exceptionally wet as a whole last month, but the South West most certainly was. Particularly so on the south coast, where rainfall totals topped 250mm.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-anomaly-maps
But in November 1929, rainfall totals exceeded even those amounts in Devon and Cornwall, for instance:
Redruth – 358 mm
Ilfracombe – 262 mm
Newton Abbott – 308 mm
Plymouth – 310 mm
Sidmouth – 273 mm
Tavistock – 455 mm
Teignmouth – 294 mm
Falmouth – 339 mm
Gulval – 321 mm
But what made November 1929 really remarkable was these incredible amounts of rainfall spread across large swathes of the country, particularly Wales, the Midlands and North West:
Rainfall in Wales was if anything greater than Devon and Cornwall, and not just over the hills – 374 mm at Swansea, 332 mm at Newport, 318 mm in Haverfordwest and 283 mm in Cardiff, for instance.
The Midlands were also badly affected, with many sites registering more than 200 mm. Lancashire was the same, including 270mm at Darwen.
Total rainfall for the UK amounted to 185mm in November 1929, but even more rain fell the following month, more widely distributed.
Both months dwarfed the 142 mm last month.
In the 4 months from October to January, a total of 691.3 mm fell in 1929/30, compared to the 554.8 mm in the last four months:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/date/UK.txt
NOTES
The charts and the data shown for 1929 are available from the Met Office Archives:
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/SO_672294fb-176b-4de6-b393-4ee3a1cacbad
They were blasting the official message out this morning on Radio 4; flooding this, that and the other, wettest start to a year on record, blah blah blah. All of it untrue, of course.
The Met Office has become what we call Marmite. Australians will recognise that as Vegemite. Either way, you either love it or hate it. Certain posters from the alarmist side – eg Banton & Nailbiter – regularly rock up to defend the frankly ludicrous organisation that has fallen so far it now invents data from 103 non existent weather stations to beef the narrative up.
The only antidote to the alarmist claptrap is a relatively long life experience and observation – and critical thinking.
Kids just aren’t going to know what honest science and reportage are…
To be fair, that’s not quite what is happening. At least, if Nick is right and if I understood him.
What he was claiming, if I understand him, is that the Met Office maintains some stations and uses those stations to generate its long term climate stats. However these are well scattered, and readings from them do not meet a consumer demand for records and forecasts of where I am now.
So the Met Office reports best estimated numbers for locations where there are no stations. But it does not use these for its long term climate records.
It does not however make this clear. So if somewhere in the middle of darkest Norfolk, for instance, you look at your thermometer mounted on a shady north facing wall, you may well get a reading that corresponds to your own impression of how hot or cold it is. But it may also be quite a bit off from what the Met Office reports from the nearest local market town a couple of miles away.
This is because the nearest market town temp is not being measured, its being calculated from some station on an air base on the north east coast of Norfolk averaged together with a few other sites also tens of miles away.
Consequently, and understandably, people look up what they expect to be station records for the market town, and find it was closed in 1952, but apparently carried on reporting, which seems absurd. And indeed it is. So they get very excited. But should not, or should get excited about something different from what they are now getting upset about. Either complain there are too few stations, or complain that the estimated temps are garbage, or complain that its not being made clear they are estimated.
What to do? People who live some distance from a real currently reporting weather station and want to know what their local temperature is should invest in a min-max thermometer, site it carefully, and they will get a proper measured answer. Which the Met Office is not giving them, but the really crazy thing is they are not making clear what they are doing.
Well, this is what I think Nick was saying. Its not much of a defence of the Met Office proceedings, but if its right they are not making up readings for their long term climate records. They are just making up readings for local farmers and truckers to use on a daily and weekly basis. I suppose that is a bit better. Depending if you are a farmer or trucker!
To be fair, that’s not quite what is happening. At least, if Nick is right…
Well, well. If Nick is right? He told me not so long ago that the UK economy was booming when it was in fact tanking and tanking bigtime. I cannot – aside from the occasional lingual nit-pick – remember when Nick has been right – on anything.
Somebody made an idiotic fuss about wording and so they improved their wording. – Nick Stokes
103 non existent weather stations…
Massive Cover-up Launched by U.K. Met Office to Hide its 103 Non-Existent Temperature Measuring Stations – WUWT
Why a cover up if it is legitimate, scientific even?
So the Met Office reports best estimated numbers for locations where there are no stations.
Well you seem to be on board with it.
Immediately contradicted by:
Then what are they for if not “climate records”?
Then what are they for if not “climate records”?
I have not checked this myself.
But if Nick is correct, and if I understood him, there are two different things which the Met Office reports, based on two different measures.
One is UK average temps for long term climate record purposes. These are supposed to be from a small list of stations that really do physically exist. They might have been moved or rejigged, but they are real and are in the locations named.
The second thing is current weather for thousands of places across the UK. This has a spurious specificity. An example might be the London Borough of Camden:
https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/forecast/gcpvhy2jx#?date=2026-02-11
As far as I know there is no weather station in Camden. But the Met Office reports a temperature of 11 degrees C as I write. So where does this report come from?
Like my Norfolk example, its a construct, an estimate arrived at from the real recorded temperatures of some fairly nearby stations. As the Norfolk example shows, these may be tens of miles away.
I put it to Nick during a discussion some time ago that maybe this accounts for a well known phenomenon. People can look at the temp they are measuring in their own back garden on a well sited thermometer, and its not the temperature being reported for a little town a mile or two away. Nick, I think, confirmed this.
Now, is this legit, and do I condone it?
Neither, really. I understand that people want local temps, and if I understand it correctly, this is how the MO are arriving at them. I think, if this account is right, that it would be better to only give temps where you have actual measurements from real thermometers. Then let people draw their own conclusions about what, for instance, a reading at Marham airfield means for the town of Overstrand.
But if Nick is right, this is not faking the climate station records. Maybe Nick can come in and tell us if its what he was arguing.
The rain, it falls upon the Just, and on the Unjust fella…
But it falls mainly on the Just, because the Unjust stole the Just’s umbrella…
Our irrigation district just requested draught assistance in central Oregon. Can we add our weather stats to Devon and Cornwall, then divide by 3 to determine the average? Like they do with average global temp.
My mom was born in ’29 in Ardbeg. Not the Ardbeg where they make a nice peaty Scotch whiskey, but a tiny village in Ontario Canada. But my uncles all liked the whisky anyway.
Tsk tsk, Greg.
Whisky in Scotland, Whiskey everywhere else.
Yep.
Why would those canny Scots use an extra character if it’s not absolutely necessary?
(like when Edinburgh changed the daily noon-time12-cannon shots to a 1pm ceremony 🙂
Just a case of changing “keep your powder dry” to “keep your powder”