Tain Range North DCNN0490 – A recently opened station just 760 metres from the existing one.

57.823948 -3.958970 no Known Met office CIMO Assessment Installed 10/6/2024

A brief post to clear up any possible misunderstandings regarding weather station locations that had greatly confused me in my previous report on the “Tain Range” site. There are, in fact, two weather stations at this bombing range with this much newer one known by the addition of “North” to its name. A further few points of clarification are worthwhile.

In my search for ground images of the older Tain Range site, in addition to the Air Cadets youtube clip, I uncovered a longer “holiday style” personal film which covered a much larger area of the site. This separate youtube video at 15 minutes 11 seconds in showed what I originally thought may be the Tain Range site. I captured this still and had it gently enhanced to sharpen focus by AI. It appears to hold true to the slightly blurred original viewable on youtube.

I could not, however, verify its location as the Tain Range original site and was also unsure if this actually was a a Met Office station at all as there was no obvious Stevenson Screen though definitely a wind mast of more modern variant. This could also have been all manner of other equipment relative to the bombing range so I discounted it being unaware of a “Tain Range North” site at the time.

Checking how many sites I had left to review I today ran through the current Met Office’s stations listings . I duly ticked off Tain Range shown on the listing towards the start as below.

Loch Glascarnoch	Scotland	57.7251, -4.89419	auto
Tain Range	Scotland	57.81907, -3.96524	auto
Aonach Mor	Scotland	56.82229, -4.96787	auto

The last few on this listing are very new sites and there I came across this Tain Range North site for the first time.

Oyne No 2	Scotland	57.32067, -2.54366	man
Tain Range North	Scotland	57.82397, -3.95914	auto
Portpatrick, Craigenlee Croft	Scotland	54.86293, -5.07411	man

Checking back to the CEDA archives revealed temperature readings starting from this new site 10/6/2024 but none of the readings have been publicly archived. In addition the “start date of this site is quoted as 10/4/2015 with indications of other readings starting then. The youtube video dates back to 2019/20.

These archives also confirmed the continuing operation of the original site which is further shown to be up to date by the site’s continued prescense on weatherobs.com

As it stands I cannot definitely state I have located by ground image this new Tain Range North site, however, from my best orienting attempts I am reasonably confident it is the correct location at just under 800 metres from the existing site. The Met Office inclusion in its operational synoptic and climate reporting listings indicate the sites readings may be used in infilling missing readings and homogenisation of data.

Quite why two sites should be so close together is unusual but not unprecedented as I noted at Llandwddyn:Cwm Cownwy. The lack of a Stevenson screen in the image could predate the screen’s instalation or possibly the Met Office has deployed a different type of screen. This is also not unprecedented, at the Battersea Heliport site there is this refreshingly honest admission/note in the archives which rather explains my difficulties in identifying it in my original report. “Non-standard Gill type” relates to the instrumentation screen. “Non- Standard” only relates to Met Office specifications and such screens are internationally very common.

2018-05-18

Current

SITE INFORMATION

ALL ELEMENTS ARE SUSPECT DUE TO TALL BUILDINGS/ROTOR WASH/ENGINE EXHAUST/HEAT SOURCES. NON-STANDARD GILL-TYPE SCREEN.

In conclusion I hope I have cleared up my own confusion as much as anyone else’s. There are two reporting sites with similar names in very close proximity but only ones data is currently readily available to the public. If the new site’s readings ever become publicly available they would make an interesting comparison over such a short distance with almost certainly the same climatology.

Source: https://talkshop.blog/2026/08/21/tain-range-north-dcnn0490-a-recently-opened-station-just-760-metres-from-the-existing-one/