There are three Met Office stations starting with the name “Preston” in Lancashire, Shropshire and this one on the south coast of Dorset. Whether or not the Met Office is entirely sure where they are or what they actually do seems, at times, somewhat questionable given their apologies for not having “any climate stations at or nearby that location!
From the above initial examination of this site things became somewhat confusing and then went on to get worse. Firstly identifying the exact site was difficult as the original Met office coordinates take you to the middle of the road named “Bowleaze Coveway”. Fortunately in this case “Cove House” is the name of the house in whose back garden the Stevenson Screen sits so exact location was simplified. I had started reviewing this site when gathering data for Kingston Maurward and was amazed at the extremely low quality most Dorset sites actually are. Cove House is a prime example.
50.63732 -2.42566 Met Office CIMO (wrongly) Assessed Class 4 Temperature data from 1/8/2015 {n.b. in early 2024 this was actually Met Office assessed Class 3}
This is definitely, beyond any possible doubt, NOT a class 4 site. Delineating the just 3 metre (10 feet) circled exclusion area looks as below.
The perimeter of the rear garden is a bank from the recorded height of 44 metres amsl to 46 metres in the sloping rear field detailed on Elevation Finder . The garden outbuildings lie within the 3 metre designated area to not include artificial heat sources and also cast extensive shadows – this image is from 30/1/2025, an important date to note for further context.
This is clearly a Class 5 site prone to being in total shade in daylight hours from buildings unacceptably close. My initial confusion was now cleared up – or maybe not. For whatever reason that “Location Specific, Long Term Averages” managed to find the nearest sites when given the postcode of the weather station to work from. The nearest “Climate Station” was yet again one of those 103 undead Zombies at Weymouth (Wyke House – an equally Class 5 location) which actually only ran from 1/1/1993 and closed down 1/4/2015 to be presumably replaced by the Cove House site. However there is a remarkable twist to all this — where are records now attributed to or measured from? If that seems a very strange thing to ask then consider this report from the Met Office.
This perfectly typical monthly report details February 2025 (starting just one day after that heavily shaded image above) – this winter months “record” data as follows.
The most sunshine recorded for the month was jointly held by this “Personal”, “back garden near to cliff falling down to the sea” site of Preston Cove House that suffers major winter shade.
This high level of sunshine recording seems to be somewhat at odds with the shaded nature of the site particularly in winter with the garden buildings to the south of it. Possibly the sunshine recorder of whatever type is located separately but it seems rather optimistic of the Met Office to be confident regarding this site’s data. Conversely, the nearest Zombie still manages to report sunshine readings from the afterlife.
In summary Preston, Cove House is an adopted amateur site run for “personal” readings of very low quality indeed and heavily shaded that manages to record data given 100% credence in unlikely circumstances. Is anyone really confident in the Met Office’s data when it comes from sources like this?
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
June 16, 2025 at 04:48AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 