Oyne no 2 DCNN 1261 – A Domestic Garden, A Personal Reason & A waste of Money.

57.32046 -2.54515 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Archived Actual Temperature records from 18/3/2015.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in conjunction with the International Standards Organisation (ISO) produced the weather station assessment classifications from the Commission for Instrumentation and Meteorological Observations (CIMO) in 2014. Oyne No 2 started supplying temperature records in 2015 from this new site that is so poor it ranks as Class 5. The entirety of the CIMO standards definition for Class 5 is just two lines and reads:

“2.6 2.6 Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C)
Site not meeting the requirements of class 4.”

This site is a complete waste of time and money.

The village of Oyne lies in inland Aberdeenshire on the railway line between Inverurie to the east and Insch to the west. The original weather station in Oyne was installed in late 2007 and ran until 2013 with an atrocious observation record in a terrible location which for many years barely managed 50% of required readings. The nadir was 2011 when just 90 days successful readings were managed in the year. This was the location of the original Oyne site.

Whether or not this unreliability determined the relocation is not known but the reading frequency did not get that much better for all the effort. The ridiculous site that was chosen to relocate to is below.

{n.b. I have checked historical imagery and confirmed the “white box” in the next garden to the left in the above is not a Stevenson screen.} This screen literally is in a domestic back garden (like dozens and dozens of others) alongside a hedge, between houses and subject to shade. I seriously doubt much wind gets into the garden to disturb the entrapped air in the screen to over record during warmer weather from Aitken Effect. These types of sites like Carlton-in-Cleveland simply make the Met Office look like some Sunday morning “Pub” league team compared to the Premiership. The absurdity is that if any of these sites were to record an “extreme” it would almost certainly be ratified and heavily publicised as if the Met Office feels above ridicule. Consider just how incredibly poor Astwood Bank weather station actually is and the shameless way it was promoted as establishing a daily record – presumably there is no expectation that the public may find out where it actually is.

The astonishing thing is that this site is shown as a “Domestic garden” with the “Reason for running the site” as “Personal”. Presumably this makes it a hobby with all the optionality a hobby offers – it certainly seems that way as far as the observations record is concerned.

To study the observations record in detail. The Archive shows readings starting from 2013.

Quite why the archivists set up the spreadsheets for 2013 AND 2014 is rather puzzling as no readings whatsoever were actually taken. Temperature readings only actually started on the 18th March 2015 when of the 288 required day’s readings only 256 actually were taken (12% missing.) Things sadly did not improve and in the entirety of 2016 there were only 285 successful days with 22% missing.

In 2017 the decision was made to convert the LIGT maximum thermometer to a PRT and as at Portnellan Farm possibly to change the entire screen. Why was further expense lavished on a site barely even taking regular readings? Maximum readings completely stopped on the 2nd December and only 186 days of the year had fully completed readings. It is important to remember this is in a domestic back garden so a very short walk and this is a hobbyist/enthusiast after all – not a difficult task.

The record continues: In 2018 readings did not even start until the 10th January and only 267 readings were managed in the whole year. 2019 saw 280 readings (a quarter of a year’s equivalent missing readings). 2020 brought Covid lockdown and a reading improvement to the peak 344 , 2021 the recidivism set in dropping to 310 readings. 2022 managed 339 before further declines to 282 days readings in 2023 and 212 days in 2024.

If this all seems unduly harsh criticism of an amateur site, that is simply because that is exactly the best description. Oyne is an extremely poor site with a poor observation record replacing an equally bad predecessor. The Met Office has thrown taxpayer funded money at a site in relocation and upgrading costs that can only ever produce unrepresentative readings. It genuinely would seem the whole exercise at Oyne sites is a waste of money producing completely worthless data.

“Observations from amateur stations and those not part of the Met Office’s official network cannot be considered for entry into the official records as they’re not subject to the same internationally agreed standards that are required for the official records.”

What internationally agreed standards the likes of Oyne actually meet has become rather a sad joke.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/oyne-no-2-dcnn-1261-a-domestic-garden-a-personal-reason-a-waste-of-money/