Chivenor WMO 03707 – Can you sue the Met Office? A Sheep Farmer’s view.

51.08911 -4.14860 Met Office assessed CIMO Class 3 (?) Installed 1/1/1943

Tim Channon reviewed this airfield site back in 2012 and assessed the site as Class 4

WMO03707, Chivenor

His only caveat was “assuming Stevenson screen correctly identified” – better, more modern imagery confirms he had correctly identified it…….and the Met Office agreed with his Class 4 assessment. So why is it now Class 3 and why have farmers considered suing the Met Office?

Firstly the Class 4/3 conundrum. From FOI request this is the 2021 Met office assessment listing as Class 4.

Aerial imagery over the period from Tim’s review to present does not indicate any significant changes to the site. The only immediate area alteration is the construction of an “Astroturf” football pitch which could only worsen the site for CIMO standards. Despite no changes the Met office subsequently chose to “improve” the site’s rating in 2022 to Class 3.

From the more recent 10 metre circled aerial image I personally confirm both Tim’s and the original Met Office assessment. It should be Class 4 with an error due to poor siting recognised as 2°C – It is not Class 3. I suggest their dismal lack of quality sites has led the Met Office to “enhance” estimations of some locations as demonstrated at Hastings and Edenbridge.

So what has this to do with Farmers and suing the Met Office? As I highlighted in my review of Bournemouth:Kings Park the local tourism industry became so disenchanted with the inaccuracy of the Met Office forecasts that they established their own weather forecast service. They desperately wanted to avoid major financial losses caused by the Met Office’s poor forecasting.

Chivenor is very close to Bideford where farmer Rick Turner (already well used to the vagaries of the weather) had diversified into a regionally important tourist centre – The Big Sheep. (Author’s note:been there several times- strongly recommend!)

As ever the Met Office are making their usual overblown claims of accuracy in the face of factual criticism from multiple sources. Perhaps they could look at their own real world operating standards and their chain of poor quality weather measuring points being mostly in unrepresentative locations. Chivenor is a totally unnatural location to be taking temperature readings. Despite this the UK public is supposed to accept predictions from the Met Office not just beyond the next few days but also their apocalyptic proclamations for decades into the future and commit potentially £trillions avoiding it.

So the headline question remains “Can you sue the Met Office?” Chivenor which was installed in 1943 is not fit for purpose but newer ones obviously should be much better. I will shortly be reviewing the Bratton Fleming site, just a short distance from Chivenor and Bideford, which is an equally low grade Class 4 site installed……6th August 2021. So why can’t you sue the Met Office?

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2024/12/05/chivenor-wmo-03707-can-you-sue-the-met-office-a-sheep-farmers-view/