Rosehearty WMO03094 – A disappointing resurrection.

57.697893 -2.122708 No known Met Office CIMO Assessment Installed 1/10/1991 closed 28/2/2012 reopened 28/4/2026

As I plough my way through to completing my review of every Met Office operational site, I regularly discover yet more are opened, significantly relocated or reopened. The end of this section of the project never seems to be reached with the numbers left to review stubbornly remaining in double figures. I genuinely have no concerns regarding how many the Met Office may wish to operate providing those used for climate recording (all of them it seems) are improving in quality as one should reasonably expect. Sadly they are not and Rosehearty’s reopening is yet another example of the status quo never really changing.

Rosehearty lies on the north Aberdeenshire coast 6.5 km/4 miles west of Fraserburgh. The weather station itself is just outside the main village and within the grounds of the former RAF “bombing control tower” that was sold as the “UK’s most bombproof home“

The location was a relatively new one installed in 1991 with temperature data only archived from 1995 to 2012. It is probable that this was a replacement for the nearby Fraserburgh one which had closed in 1991. It is notable that this was a fully equipped World Meteorological Organisation reporting synoptic site which from the headline image of 2003 can be seen to have the full Met Office enclosure paving and equipment that Tim Channon evaluated here as a potential source of extraneous heat effects.

Given that the site (built for £750,000) had been sold to a private buyer (for £350,000) it seems odd that the site would later be re-opened but that is what appears to have happened as noted in the archives. N.B. had a relocation taken place that should have been noted as per the Chillingham Barns example. “AWS” stands for Automatic Weather Station.

Remarks

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So what was this site actually like? Google Streetview from 2008 does offer a view of the site in its operational days.

I would assess this site as Class 4 back then with the proximity to the building, walling to the garden higher than the base of the screen and the equipment/power cabinet all uncomfortably close to the screen as is the metal wind mast. Subsequent images show the enclosure much more heavily enclosed by fencing, the wind mast removed and no evidence of any other equipment.

The current archive record suggests no wind data is now being taken with the overall site probably down graded and this is probably now solely classified as a climate reporting site. When any new imagery becomes available, I will add it to this post. In the meantime it just looks like the Met Office is not prepared to proactively improve its complement of weather stations and carry on in a now time honoured low grade manner.