50.80785 -4.30970 Met Office CIMO Assessment not known. Installed 22/6/2024
Hollacombe is located in north west inland Devon just a few miles to the east of Holsworthy. The Met Office original given coordinates are typically very imprecise and indicate a point almost 100 metres away from where the screen actually is. This is a great shame as it would have been a much better site. Most oddly though the quoted elevation of the screen at 150 metres amsl is also very much incorrect and the postcode is shown as “Unknown” – this prompted me to wonder if the Met Office actually know where this site really is.
Hollacombe did not appear on my latest CIMO listing from the Met Office dated February 2025. This seems odd given that it has a quoted installation date of 11th April 2024 with archived temperature readings starting from 22nd June. It is worth noting though that my previous experience with getting assessment details for the newly installed Neatishead demonstrated that particular site was not CIMO assessed until after I had enquired. This seems quite bizarre for the Met Office not to consider such details prior to installations or possibly this screen was intended to be elsewhere i.e. at its quoted coordinates?
The issue regarding the elevation shown of 150 metres further muddies the waters. The screen is actually some 27 metres higher (90 feet) according to elevation finder.
Cross checking this to the Met Office supplied Ordnance Survey sheet shows the Met Office annotated site again at the substantially wrong location. The single chevron on the road alongside the site indicates a gradient of between 1 in 8 and 1 in 7. confirming this is a very sloping site.
As this site is so relatively new there are no Street view images available, however, roadside imagery to the farmhouse entry further reinforces the steeply sloping nature of the surroundings.
With no official Met Office assessment to compare to, (rather like Tim Channon in the early days of the Surface Stations Project) I consider this to be a Class 5 site on the basis of very close proximity to buildings and a poly tunnel, being hedged to the north around to south west and on a significant slope. The agricultural nature of this unenclosed screen cannot ensure there are no transient extraneous heat sources directly affecting the screen.
Moving onto the observations record, as a new manual site it would be expected to be very good with early day’s enthusiasm – only it is not. Of the 206 possible days from the first reading on 8th June only 168 visits to the screen are recorded as being made. Unfortunately on 38 of those days either the maximum, minimum or both were not taken – 130 successful attempts out of a possible 206 is less than two thirds. A typical period example below: Columns I and J are maximum and minimum respectively with NA indicating no readings against a particular date – note the significant missing days in the date column.
In conclusion the Met Office has installed a new site barely over a year ago that they do not even seem to be certain of its location and elevation both of which are wrongly quoted. The site does not appear to have been CIMO assessed before installation and no consideration of WMO guidelines appears to have been made given its poor standard. Finally, despite modern day automatic reporting equipment being inexpensive financially yet much more valuable in meteorological terms, yet another manual reporting station with a poor observations record was added.
I find this represents unacceptably poor operational standards on the part of the Met Office.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
August 8, 2025 at 02:02PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 