Emley Moor No 2 WMO03346 – Next to the UK’s biggest Sundial and 2 “Olympic sized” swimming pool’s worth.

53.61211 -1.66846 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 2/8/2011 to Replace 1st unit installed 1/1/1964

Emley Moor is about 5 miles south west of Huddersfield. If you are anywhere near the area you are unlikely to miss the mast (now officially known as the Arqiva Tower) and the weather station will be found alongside it. This is a No 2 site replacing the original in 2011 but there really was no site improvement in the process – it was never a good one.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this site is the moving shadow cast by the tower like some giant sundial casting the time over the area. All the bright daytime aerial images allow the time of day to be ascertained. This one below shows the current no 2 site will have recently moved out of shadow from the mid morning image with the sun in the south east shading to the north west.

This early afternoon image of the original number 1 site from 2009 shows the site about to enter shadow with the sun just past its most southerly of the day. The 300 metre relocation of the site really does not seem to have been worth the effort if the intention was improving matters.

Does the shadow make much difference? Anyone who has ever noted the dramatic drop in power output from solar panels when a cloud passes over on a sunny day will have noted the effect. However it is not just the tower that downgrades the site, Emley Moor has something in common with the Scarborough weather station site visible in the image below.

This raised geometric shape is a covered potable water reservoir that is notably elevated from its surroundings. I cannot find exact capacity figures, however, the Google Maps measuring tool suggests the square area of the top at 1,000 square metres. The imagery from street view suggests a height in the region of 4 metres and overall depths of covered reservoirs are typically 5 metres. There are potentially to 5 million litres (1.1 million UK gallons) of water storage capacity. In journalistic parlance this is the equivalent of over 2 “Olympic sized” swimming pools.

This really does create an alteration to the natural surroundings. Sandy soils are demonstrated to rapidly warm up and cool down ( c.f. “Topsy-turvy” Santon Downham ) due to their lack of water retention. Water has a very high specific heat of approx 4.2kj/kg/k (air is normally quoted as just 1kj/kg/k) thus takes a long time to warm up in summer holding down temperatures locally (i.e. cooler on the coast in summer) but conversely cools down slowly in winter (i.e. warmer on the coast in winter). The overall annual cool to warm variation of holding water in such reservoirs ranges from extremes of 6°C to 14°C. This will inevitably modify ground level temperatures in the immediate vicinity especially in still air conditions.

In addition there is also the problem of the size of the reservoir structure and its wind sheltering effects with the screen enclosure visible to the right in the above image just behind the brick built control building. All in all this is well worthy of its Class 5 rating.

Mercifully the Met Office has not derived 60 year rolling climate averages for Emley itself, rather in lieu they offer suitably bizarre alternatives:-

24 miles distant, the RAF airfield site by the taxiway at Church Fenton which stopped readings in 2013.

21 miles away they refer to the comedy value of Rochdale which even most Met Office staff would struggle to believe….if they could even find it.

18 miles takes you to central urban Sheffield by the parked ice cream van and depriving Emley residents of cold weather payments.

16 miles finds the Bradford West Substation keeping the Bingley screen cosy.

7 miles away comes the pièce de résistance of Huddersfield Oakes. Despite being included in the 2004 released “THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW SET OF LONG-TERM CLIMATE AVERAGES FOR THE UK” Huddersfield Oakes had already ceased to function providing its last readings on the 30th September 1986 – soon to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its death. Need I say more…………..

In his earlier review of Emley, Tim Channon stated of Emley “Won’t be (or shouldn’t be) a climatic station.” Unfortunately it most certainly is a climatic station – yet another sad indictment of modern Met Office “climate” standards. I certainly will not be including any data from this site in a sensible climate history reconstruction.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/01/04/emley-moor-no-2-wmo03346-next-to-the-uks-biggest-sundial-and-2-olympic-sized-swimming-pools-worth/