Wight: Shanklin DCNN 3208 and Ventnor DCNN 5771 – You really could not make this up! But the Met Office can…..and does.

Shanklin 50.62366 01.18085 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1947 Digital Archived temperature records from 1/1/1959

Ventnor 50.59274 -1.21329 Met Office CIMO assessed Class 5 Installed 1/1/1926 Digital archived temperature records from 1/1/1959

There are 3 currently operating Met Office weather stations on the Isle of Wight, the third being St Catherines Point that I shall review later. The above 2, Shanklin and Ventnor, are just 2.4 miles apart with St Catherines point just a further 4 miles from Ventnor. Quite why the Met Office requires 3 separate sets of data for climate reporting so close together is very strange – but nothing like as strange as the bizarre way these first two have been operated. Welcome to alternative reality.

I often refer to the Met Office’s Location specific long term climate averages which is (presumably) designed to represent an even spread of the UK, so quite why the Met Office chooses to display two in such close proximity is particularly odd. However, there is more plain “weirdness” to add to this later.

Firstly to examine the basic sites, both are manual reporting with reasonably long term records. Ventnor is Class 5 for the fairly obvious reason it is surrounded on north, east and south by trees and shrubs within 4 metres casting both deep shade and creating an enclosed cauldron hugely distorting readings. It is an extremely poor site by any standards.

Shanklin is marginally better in an area of parkland but is similarly tree sheltered and shaded and rated a lowly Class 4. There is no immediate StreetView of Ventnor, but Shanklin looks like this. An outwardly well maintained civic style site but that does not tell the whole story.

The problem lies in the recent recording of observations. I always like to check the diligence and accuracy and start by examining recent years. Experience has shown me that whilst 20th century observation standards were generally good to often excellent such as at Lake Vyrnwy and Cawood, more recent times can be exceptionally poor to the point of being pointless as at many sites such as Mickleham. This is why I was frankly amazed to find that a site could be attended every day and still be a pointless exercise for years on end with no action seemingly being taken to remedy the problem.

To derive a daily average temperature the Met Office adds the day’s minimum and maximum readings together and divides by two – ridiculously simplistic, potentially completely misleading but that is the paradigm the Met Office runs to. {Worth noting that is not a universal formula and all manner of esoteric systems have been applied by meteorological authorities around the world over time. } Obviously this system requires two daily readings and here is the bizarre issue starting below at Shanklin.

Columns I and J are maxima and minima respectively. On the 5th October 2017 the observer stopped recording maxima despite attending the site and fulfilling all the other functions……….and no maxima have been recorded in the entire period since. Very odd indeed. So I looked at Ventnor for the same time. Same date, same problem.

Why on earth would the observer(s) suddenly stop taking maximum readings simultaneously? The difference with Ventnor (indicating a different observer) was that from 2nd December reading maxima returned.

The simultaneity of stopping suggested some major change and I finally deduced the old traditional thermometers were changed to PRTs and either the observers were not trained to read them or possibly assumed the readings were automatically transmitted. The Ventnor observer managed to resolve the difficulty and readings resumed after a few weeks but barely over 2 miles away readings were never resumed as at 31st December 2023 which is as far as current archives run.

This is astonishing when the implications are considered. Going back to those Location specific climate averages which run up to 31/12/2020 for Shanklin. All the data from 5th October 2017 onwards had to have been derived by a (“peer reviewed”) computer generated process from “well correlated” nearby stations, the identities of which the Met Office refuse to disclose claiming their chosen locations (“inputs”) are not an “output” of the process and have not been retained. Surely someone at the Met Office could simply have checked out why those maxima were not being taken and corrected the problem. A single phone call would probably have sufficed. I cannot positively state this problem still exists but it definitely was from 5/10/2017 to 31/12/2023 and likely still is. Did everyone involved in this just seem to accept this strange lack of readings and feel a computer programme fabricating numbers was preferable to the real thing? Potentially almost 8 years and counting of a complete waste of effort for no justifiable reason – simply crazy.

YCMIU – but the Met Office has and probably still is. Is this value for taxpayer money or irresponsible negligence?

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/wight-shanklin-dcnn-3208-and-ventnor-dcnn-5771-you-really-could-not-make-this-up-who-cares/