Kielder Castle DCNN 2007 – A Forest Setting for a hilarious runaround from the Met Office.

55.23439 -2.58046 Met Office CIMO assessed Class 5. Installed 1949, Archived Temperature records 1/1/1959 to 18/3/2013 Manual reporting station. 22/7/2013 to 17/3/2023 as Automatic.

Kielder Castle weather station is shown as currently operational on the Met Office station listing site however, the CEDA archive shows readings seem to have stopped 17/3/2023. The site was seemingly CIMO assessed in 2023 as Class 5 and Met Office rated satisfactory also in 2023 (if their data is to be believed.) Whether or not the site is still functioning is open to debate but that does not seem to be particularly unusual in Kielder with frequent service interruptions in the past. In fact the site became the source of a quite typical Met Office runaround for another enquirer.

Firstly, this station is effectively in a forest clearing and subject to shading effects from all sides. This did not, however, seem to stop the site allegedly reporting wind speed and direction for a period though such data does not appear to be archived. As can be seen from the street view image below this was/is a very poor site and was/is consistently one of the coldest reporting sites in England. At Class 5 this was/is an unsuitable site for contributing data to the historic temperature record. Why the Met Office feels otherwise is a complete mystery to me.

Normally that would be the end of this review but then I chanced upon a truly bizarre Freedom of Information request published online on the website below – it makes for hilarious reading. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/kielder_castle_weather_station_n

All the details in full are available from the above link but to summarise:

A local resident and, presumably, amateur meteorologist (Doug Paulley) asked the Met Office for real time data to assist in his weather forecasting for the local area tourism industry. Such an audacious request for actual data had to be dismissed immediately with a classic government agency fob off. As I know to my own cost, Doug required a Freedom of Information request to attempt to squeeze blood out of a proverbial stone. He was told it was a manual station with no real time data available so, quite wrongly, he was told no such information existed. Knowing better than the Met Office he then had to tell them the station was being automated and it was this new information he was after. So the Met Office sent him another copy of their original silly reply. He corrected them, they apologised, and essentially told him that when the automation was eventually up and running he could buy the data they had on offer.

As he was seemingly running a public service (and with ever increasing delays in providing the data) it appears Doug ended up involving his MP to expedite finally getting the information and getting the initial £560 + VAT fee (for just 3 months in 2013) waived. He was somewhat disappointed not to have access to wind data as he claimed the old manual reporting unit was known to provide these but seemingly (and unsurprisingly in the location) no longer were. But then insult was added to injury, Doug discovered the hourly readings were freely available online from a German website – his frustration is clear for all to see and par for the course with the Met Office.

Doug also emphasised separately the former wind data

Unfortunately for Doug the final answer was yet another fob off. He was not going to get free readings from the Met Office even though he could get “allegedly” inferior ones i.e. not subject to Met Office quality control from third parties and only at hourly resolution and thus not guaranteed to give daily maxima and minima. The same applies to this day where Weatherobs (amongst others) will offer hourly readings across a wide range of data free of charge. I believe he just gave up at this point just short of one year after his first inquiry.

Whilst I appreciate the Met Office is a Government agency and responsible for raising some of its operating costs from commercial operations, I genuinely feel immediate recent data should not be a paid for item. Forecasting is the mainstay skill and requirement of the Met Office operation, the supply of basic raw data in arrears is hardly a major value item warranting payment. But then again as sites such as Kielder are so poor, it is hard to see what value the data has anyway.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/kielder-castle-dcnn-2007-a-forest-setting-for-a-hilarious-runaround-from-the-met-office/