Baintown DCNN 1524 – A new site, a strange history and very poor standards – another emerging pattern?

56.22082 -3.04261 Met Office assessed CIMO Class 4 Installed 1/9/2015…..Maybe

A poster on Notalotofpeopleknowthat advised me he would shortly be visiting Fife and asked if there were any weather station sites there I would like him to photograph for me. Delighted with the offer I researched the area and came up with the same sorry pattern I had noticed down in Kent of many closed good sites and very few, mostly poor, current ones. I also uncovered further evidence of odd record keeping of dates from the Met Office.

So first a review of Baintown and its “history.”……..

The google streetview image indicates a back garden site at the bottom of the carefully tended vegetable patch, half way up the hill known as “Bonnybank”. A sloping site in an agricultural landscape with no tamper proof screening is a world away from the security seen in many “municipal” sites. My initial thoughts were, why again was the Met Office still installing such rather “amateur” manual recording sites of such mediocre standards on 1st September 2015 as their archive shows. But then I noticed the above street view image date of MAY 2009. A further search of google earth pro indicates the site predates its claimed installation date by probably more than 10 years. It seems to be a genuine former amateur’s site that for some reason the Met Office has “adopted” into its climate reporting stations list. Quite a number of other Met Office sites have such questionable “opening” dates.

This oddity was not as peculiar as it may seem until I tried to locate other Fife stations.

There are just 3 – and Baintown is the highest ranked

The entire county has Baintown – CIMO Class 4, Auchtermuchty Rossie – Class 5 (manual and installed 1992) and the Leuchars automatic aviation site which is also Class 5. So where are, or should be, all the others?

Belliston opened 1949 closed in 2017. Braefoot Bay opened in 1986 closed in 2008. Cupar (Elmwood Agricultural College) opened 1973 closed in 2018. Cupar Sugar opened 1938 closed in 1972. Fifeness opened 1981 closed in 2007. St Andrews opened 1913 closed in 1984. Pitreavie No 2 opened 1959 closed in 1985. Glenrothes opened 1970 closed in 1978. Kirkcaldy opened 1950 closed in 1979. Could none of these places have retained a good site? Are students at Elmwood Agricultural College in Cupar unable or unwilling to learn about the highly relevant subject of the weather and continue to manage a weather station?

Nine fully operational sites in the 1970s have, over the intervening fifty years, resolved down to just a third of that number with low grade sites in such a military (Leuchars) and meteorologically important coastal county. Simultaneously in a narrow sector of West London of much smaller area there are currently 11 operating sites with many added in recent years. Could it be there are not a lot of opportunities for “record breaking” temperatures in Fife?

I again contend that the historic temperature record is being distorted by the selection process of recording sites as typically evidenced in Fife , Kent and elsewhere.