Boulmer WMO03240 – An area of Nuclear deterrence of more than one kind.

55.42092 -1.60120 Met Office Assessed CIMO Class 4 Digital Temperature records from 1/10/1975

Boulmer weather station lies 6.4km/4 miles east of Alnwick and just 1km/0.6 miles from the beautiful sandy beaches of Alnmouth and Druridge Bays on the coast of Northumberland. The former RAF Boulmer actually started life as a fake “dummy” airfield to draw unwelcome attention away from other airfields in WW2. It subsequently became a real active airbase for a short period but was never a key airfield in the conventional sense. The old landing strips are now returning to nature and even morphing into a holiday camp. The site, however, is still a very important RAF base with high security around the perimeter.

This image below from the RAF website gives an indication of the nature of the work carried out here. Boulmer plays a key part in the UK’s defence system as well as having an important role in our Nuclear deterrence. On the ground images are not an option from this site!

There will definitely have been a weather station for aviation use at Boulmer but no records appear either digitalised nor in manual form prior to 1975. This is probably due to the nearby Alnwick Observatory being a long term observing site and would have served the area. Prior to closure of the Alnwick, records started from the RAF site which by then was no longer near the aging runway but was near the Control Tower and Helipads for the Air Sea Rescue service.

Put bluntly, this is another of those sites that seems to have been located with a tape measure in hand. The 10 metre Class 3 exclusion area does just manage to avoid any of the surrounding buildings. In reality the screen is very heavily wind shaded to all compass points bar south west. The wind shade effect of buildings is proportional to their height and in this case those building comprise the Control Tower, hangars and offices. These are certainly not single storey structures and such “slab-like” buildings cast wind shadow up to 15 times their height.

Boulmer comes in as Class 4 with its attendant deemed innacury due to siting of +/- 2 °C. It is also reasonable to say that this is not just a wind shade issue, the surrounding grass is exceptionally unnatural being almost perfectly manicured to striped lawn standards in every historic image.

The role of the RAF station is defence against largely Nuclear attack but the near locality has been the subject to other types of nuclear “battles”

With the CEGB proposing to build “sister” nuclear plants to Sizewell B’s Westinghouse SNUPPs Light Water Reactor at Druridge Bay (to reduce UK dependence on CO2 producing coal fired plants) “celebrities” were dragged out to support the “righteous cause” to ban these evil nuclear plants. There is a certain irony that now we have the situation where CO2 is the evil monster and nuclear power is considered the “Knight in Shining Armour ” to save the world from the CO2! This irrational nuclear deterrence worked, the nuclear plant was not built and even the cement works (required for the bases of all those wind turbines) were removed. There is still, however, the prospect of open cast coal mining hanging over the area – even more ironic.

In summary, Boulmer is a poor quality weather station which is a featured “Climate Averages” station from 1961 (14 years before it came into existence) that really does not accurately represent its Northumberland region……but such details seem almost irrelevent, like the proposed Druridge Bay nuclear plant “it’s the thought that counts”!

The end of the world OR a CO2 hero?

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/04/07/boulmer-wmo03240-an-area-of-nuclear-deterrence-of-more-than-one-kind/