Edenbridge DCNN 5302 – Class 1 Excellence…or not?

51.20408 0.13458 (Actual location) – Met Office quoted wrong co-ordinates 51.20346 0.1362 Real Elevation 42 metres amsl – Met Office (wrong location) 45 metres amsl. Met Office assessed Class 1 or 4 depending when they assessed it and “Excellent” dependent on who input (or didn’t ) the data. Installed 1/1/1973.

During my research into the CIMO classification of Hastings weather station I received the following admission from Angus Bruce BSc MIET (Regional Network Officer South east England- Met Office)

“The default CIMO rating is 1 on our site visit application (and Met O ‘Excellent’), so it looks like the class hasn’t been entered correctly, human error.”

A clear admission that the Met Office has a database that (by default) records all their sites as Class 1 and “Excellent” unless manually altered downwards – excellence assumed. So is this yet another case of “Human Error”? Well I did ask…….

Firstly to clarify the position, the Met office co-ordinates given on the CEDA archive do not accurately locate the site which is, in reality, 120 metres away from the quoted co-ordinates. The relevance of this inaccuracy takes on significant importance when the site is viewed from aspects of elevation and wider perspective.

“Edenbridge” weather station is actually 5 radial kilometres from Edenbridge railway station but just a few metres from the dam wall of its former site name of “Bough Beech” and best known for its artificial reservoir.

The Met Office quoted location claims an elevation of 45 metres amsl, however the actual location is lower at 41.5 metres. This difference becomes all them more relevant considering the unnatural curve of the lake above is the dam wall which tops at 55 metres. Edenbridge weather stations sits at the bottom of an artificial slope clearly evident from the Ordnance Survey map.

This Youtube clip below gives good panoramic views of this very attractive area showing the typical Kent Weald countryside and also the somewhat unnatural and unrepresentative nature of the lake. There really are no large natural lakes in any part of Kent. I have been unable to catch any glimpse of the station as it is hidden by the ridge of the dam wall.

In more specific close detail, the Screen is just 30 metres from the start of a large area of hard-standing which clearly rules out any possibility of meeting CIMO Class 1 on that count alone.

So how did the Met Office assess this site, compromised by external heat sources and lying at the foot of the steep slope up to the dam of an artificial body of water not representative of the natural region as Class 1?

Well they probably didn’t! Under Freedom of Information request I obtained Met Office CIMO assessments for England for 2021 as Class 4,

The same for 2022

But then in 2023 and with no amendments to the site…..

Almost miraculously this site improved itself from a lowly Class 4 (inaccuracy due to siting of 2°C) to a perfect Class 1 and the Met Office’s unique rating system of “EXCELLENT”

A further worrying point for this manually reporting site is that readings are not regularly taken. Again from FOI, in 2021 80 day’s readings were absent, in 2022 61 missing and in 2023 there were 134 missing day’s readings – not excellent at all.

Obviously this is yet another “Human Error” but it seems the Met Office no longer likes to admit to me that they are wrong. Following the revelation of the Hastings error, I queried the CIMO Class 1 rating given to the Cassley station. As I noted then, despite an initial offer to discuss issues with me by Angus Bruce’s national manager, Karl Shepherdson, the latter then reneged on the offer, declined to discuss anything at all with me and directed me to the “gatekeepers” on their enquiry desk. I was, however, somewhat cryptically assured that the Met Office current assessment of Cassley was “correct” but not confirmation that it was Class 1.

Unfortunately the Met Office enquiry desk also now seems somewhat unwilling to answer many of my enquiries. I have raised all the above issues regarding Edenbridge with the enquiry desk plus copying in my email request to the responsible area manager (Angus Bruce) but only to be met with a wall of silence and no reply.

Edenbridge is not Class 1 nor Excellent but until independent assessment or oversight is allowed how will we ever know? The Met Office seems to feel it is optional whether to openly reveal information so yet another, needless, Freedom of information request.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/10/14/edenbridge-dcnn-5302-class-1-excellence-or-not/