Sennybridge WMO03507 – Looks good enough to me but maybe not. Who dares – wins I guess.

52.06331 -3.61469 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1995

Sennybridge is certainly not likely to break any high temperature records though it is quite likely to break a few cold ones. At over 1000 feet elevation and a long way from the sea this site is also in a notably wet location. The sort of area for toughening up elite troops which they just happen to! Sennybridge is in an SAS Training Area.

Evaluating sites like these is not as straightforward as the Met Office seems to think as assessing urban area ones. Whilst the Met Office are happy to absurdly claim airport sites by main roads such as Heathrow are Class 3 (clearly not) they seem to relentlessly mark down such open rural ones. Tim Channon’s review put Sennybridge down as Class 3 but solely based on recent changing agriculture and drainage installation. His 100 and 30 metre delineated areas indicated Class 2 otherwise.

Tim did not appear to have the benefit of close up imagery. For my part, I personally cannot understand why the Met Office makes this site a lowly Class 4 so I searched for better photos – firstly google StreetView. Immediately, the Met Office’s own equipment cabinet looks suspiciously (and needlessly) close to the screen.

An older, different angle view still reveals the equipment cabinet inexplicably and needlessly too close. It does, however confirm the site is flat enough, open countryside and not subject to any shading. The site enclosure is well maintained and fully equipped.

Fortunately an online (Welsh) blogger has seen fit to post his own online photography (with an amusing gibe at the English!) to give even more perspective.

Taking all these into consideration Class 2 gets technically ruled out largely on the problems within the enclosure itself which are solely the responsibility of the Met Office. This all seems very odd as I would certainly trust the accuracy of this site’s readings over the likes of Chertsey or the new South Farnborough site that is demonstrably wrong. In the end I agree with Tim’s rating with the caveat that for just an “ha’p’orth of tar” this could have been a reliable good site. All of which begs the question why cannot the Met Office be bothered to marginally improve or modernise the instrumentation and restore this site to the quality it should be?

So finally a big thank you to “Britain’s Best Dead Ends” for the wonderful images and a very interesting blog.