From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Excellent work by Ray Sanders, who has up to date photos of the weather station at Kew, which have been posted at Tallbloke:
Kew, according to the Met Office, is a Class 2 site:
The photo, taken this month by a contact of Ray’s, clearly shows Kew is most definitely NOT Class 2.
For a start, the it must be covered in low vegetation, less than 10cm. That long grass is about 1m tall. Even Class 3 must have vegetation of less than 25cm, which means Kew is at best a Class 4.
Secondly, the Stevenson screen is just inches away from that wooden fence. Again, this conflict with the Class 2 rule about “open space”. This rule is particularly significant, because fencing creates a sun trap effect, reducing air circulation.
Class 4 sites have uncertainty of up to 2C, meaning that the temperature of 35.1C at Kew could be as low as 33.1C statistically:
According to the Met Office, the next five highest temperatures after Kew that day were all junk stations. Heathrow is technically Class 3, which is absurd, and the other four are all Class 4 and 5s:
