Llanwddyn:Cwm Cownwy DCNN 7949 – Quantity over quality.

52.74942 -3.46995 Met Office Assessed CIMO Class 5 & UNSATISFACTORY Installed 1/1/1988

I have started with the above image that does NOT show the Stevenson Screen to put the nature of this site in context of its overall surroundings. Located at 235 metres AMSL, the valley sides reach steeply up to a marked spot height of 388 metres. This type of location is highly likely to suffer from “frost hollows” unusual wind effects, heavy shading and is certainly not representative of a large area. The weather experienced at this point of its small valley will be markedly different from areas just a few tens of metres away above the valley sides. This is what the Screen location actually looks like –

Note that there is no attempt at site security/fencing. Clearly this is not quite the highly sophisticated, well equipped and maintained image that the Met Office likes to portray of their weather stations as below.

But perhaps the most bizarre aspect of Llanwddyn: Cwm Cownwy is that it lies just 924 metres away from CIMO CLASS 1 Lake Vyrnwy No 2 which is a very well equipped, well sited and properly maintained station quite rightly rated as “EXCELLENT” as in image below.

{Lake Vyrnwy No 2 location 52.75737 -3.46548}

The Met Office lists over 380 sites currently used for “climate” reporting purposes and the nation’s historic temperature record – Llanwddyn is one of them. Despite its worst possible CIMO rating and unsurprisingly being graded as Unsatisfactory by the Met Office’s own unique and rather vague rating system, they are still using its readings.

The bulk of the Met Office £300 million annual budget is tax payer funded. The £1.2 billion supercomputer is similarly funded. Sites like LLanwddym: Cwm Cownwy appear to represent spending for no justifiable end result given its readings can only ever represent a tiny and very sparsely populated area PLUS they already have an excellent site so incredibly close by.

Why the Met Office continues to run such poor sites is beyond any rational explanation I am aware of. However, I am very confident that should it record a temperature extreme or even “record” then it would almost certainly be nationally proclaimed. Quantity over quality?