57.52520 -3.92449 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 installed 1/10/1997
Despite many modern myths Cawdor Castle was not even built in the times of King Macbeth and there is no reference to it in the the play. Any allusions to it are fictional. Similarly the weather station is neither old nor actually particularly near the castle itself with dubious data.
There really is nothing to say in favour of this site. It is typical of very many Scottish sites in yet again being in a horticultural environment with greenhouses, hotbeds, cold-frames and general garden support for the main walled gardens and maze. This is a manual reporting station and its record keeping is very good indeed with most of its 26 operating years completed in full – presumably a function of the garden staff. What always baffles me is why any meteorologist would feel it acceptable to add data from this site to the national historic temperature record – is this really anything like the natural surrounding countryside? For comparison a close up.
The trees to the east and north fulfil their function of breaking all the chill easterly/northerly winds for the benefit of the walled gardens. The walling itself further blocks breezes with the proximity of buildings absurdly close. The image below shows 10 metre and just 3 metre (10 feet) radius circles – it is hard to imagine a more compromised site, though this is actually not unusual in these types of sites in Scotland.
There is also a private weather station in Cawdor which reports its data to the Met Office WOW website. Below is a more typical view from the location of this PWS much more representative of the surrounding area – completely different to the Castle grounds.
Cawdor Castle weather station is virtually useless for weather prediction and even more so for climate reporting being in a totally unnatural location. I will shortly be publishing the full list of Met Office weather stations so completely inappropriately located in walled gardens. There an astonishingly large number and Cawdor Castle is one of them.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
April 21, 2025 at 05:21AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 