Preston Montford DCNN 4736 – A Triumph of style over substance.

52.72454 -2.84183 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 1/1/1976

Preston Montford is a long established manual reporting weather station in Shropshire just under 9 miles from the Shawbury automatic reporting site and at the same elevation. Whilst Shawbury is Class 2, I personally feel that its readings can be potentially distorted at times by the rotor wash from such extensive helicopter activity in the vicinity. Preston Montford, in contrast, is inaccurate continually due to its poor Class 5 siting. This and other issues stand out very starkly when the two sites “readings” are compared.

Preston Montford is operated by the Field Studies Council, an educational charity founded in 1943 at the Natural history museum. This organisation is responsible for 11 official Met Office weather stations with some manual and some automatic reporting. Its courses predominate around outdoor activities, nature conservation, environmental sciences et alia. It also heavily promotes issues relating to “Climate Change” The link is well worth reading indicating their commitment – it starts as below:

The “style” is very good indeed in fact there can be no problem aiming “to ensure all students are able to collect high quality data in and around their local space, ……” etc.

A further sign on this commitment/style is depicted on the Preston Montford’s individual Facebook page on “World Meteorological Day” 23td March 2024

What is not to like about this fantastic commitment – in fact it is so good I shall repeat it complete with funky graphics! Isn’t it great to see such devotion to the cause.

“Weather monitoring plays a crucial role in understanding our climate’s patterns and predicting any future changes It an essential part in managing food production, disease incidence and extreme weather events, which ensures the safety and well being of our society

Here at PM, we’ve been recording climate data for the MET office every day for over 50 years

From measuring temperatures in our Stevenson screen to sunshine hours using our Campbell-Stokes recorder, we’re proud to be a part of something so important“

So how is it that on 23rd March 2024, World Meteorological Day that NOBODY TOOK ANY WEATHER READINGS ? Nobody even went to the screen and attempted this task at all. Columns I and J are maximum and minimum respectively, NA means no reading taken and no entry at all exists for the 23rd March 2024.

The reality is in fact that this screen was not overly troubled with visitors in all of 2024, and even when the door was opened those who tried to take readings somehow failed to do so……..167 times.

Here is a typical example of more of the year.

Bear in mind…..

“

“Here at PM, we’ve been recording climate data for the MET office every day for over 50 years“

Really? A more detailed look with data obtained under Freedom of Information Request from the Met Office itself tells a dramatically different story. The number of days when readings were taken ( num_obs) and the derived annual average temperatures are shown for 2023, 2022 and 2021.

My calculations of 2021 to 2024 inclusive make that 821 days successful readings out of 1461 – just a 56% success rate. “Here at PM, we’ve been recording climate data for the MET office 56% of the time” really does not have the same marketing “zing” does it?

The blissful lack of any reality is compounded by the Met Office’s mathematical conjuring tricks and desperate need to fill a box that requires a number (presumably any number will do) to be input. How on earth is it possible to compile a “annual mean daily air temperature” from as little as 124 out of a possible 365 days readings? Given that those readings that are taken are much more likely to be taken in spring summer and autumn months (course times) than in winter, any figure is staggeringly unlikely to represent the year as a whole. The only 100% certainty is that such derivations are complete JUNK and yet this is exactly what the Met Office publishes for several sites. For anyone who may think this is an exaggeration I recommend reading this report on Mickleham. In fact every FSC that is still manual reporting (most) returns unacceptably low levels of reading frequency.

These figures above for mean daily temperature can be compared with neighbouring Shawbury which the Met Office also supplied under FOI. The two stations are at 71 metres a.m.s.l for Preston Montford and 72 metres for Shawbury, effectively the same. This is the local area map.

As an automatic station {Ed note: why aren’t all of them this far into the 21st Century?} the reading frequency is always almost 100%. Despite the dubious derivation of daily mean used by the Met Office, the two sites really should be very similar. Of course they are not.

The Met Office accuses those, like myself who question the current AGW mantra, of “Disinformation”. Here, as in the vast majority of all my posts, I only use Met Office supplied data along with basic publicly available maps and general background information. The Met Office “data” ( that they have advised under FOI request) shows that the annual daily mean temperature in 2021 was 11.3 °C at Preston Montford but was only 10.2°C less than 9 miles away i.e. 1.1°C of catastrophic global warming in less than an hours easy cycle ride. It must be true because the Met Office says so.

Ironically this site is used as a “Climate Averages” site from 1961 to 2020. Given that they are largely having to concoct numbers to fill the numerous modern day gaps, the pure invention of data for the 15 year period of 1961 to 1976 prior to the site’s existence is obviously no problem at all.

A quick look at the site itself clearly supports the low grade assessment with multiple shade effects and wind sheltering but even if it were Class 1 the lack of observations would largely render the site useless. The screen in its entirety (black painted interior and legs) was replaced in January 2018 when the maiximum reading LIGT was replaced by the electronic PRT seen below.

In conclusion this site is very long term, like many other FSC sites, but has a poor location, a terrible observations record BUT is like the Met Office itself, self proclaimed, excellent. The FSC itself makes factually untrue claims and is awash with virtue signalling that bears no resemblance to reality. “Climate change” considerations become risible when those making them cannot even adequately supply even the most basic data that they are responsible for. The Met office has then demonstrably used this junk data in a manner that passes no scientific scrutiny to provide equally risible conclusions of annual temperature.

No worries though, the BBC and the Met Office have recently come together to tackle “Weather disinformation”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/30/bbc-and-met-office-team-up-to-tackle-weather-disinformation/#:~:text=The%20BBC%20and%20the%20Met,by%20the%20corporation%20in%202017.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/preston-montford-dcnn-4736-a-triumph-of-style-over-substance/