Altnahinch Filters DCNN9147 – A weather station or a linguistics lesson? Probably more useful for the latter.

55.04783 -6.25538 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Installed 1/1/1965

The Met Office assesses this site as the lowest possible Class 5 with their acknowledgement of inaccuracy due to siting of +/- 5 °C – a poor ranking it shares with over 120 other UK weather stations. The plethora of poor sites is unsurprising given that the vast majority of Met Office weather stations were never originally intended for the purposes of long term climate reporting and served other unrelated purposes. This misappropriation of such site’s data for “Climate Science” manipulated computer modelling together with the parlous state of the Met Office’s network should be a major news item but instead the linguistics of its unusual name is all that seems to preoccupy our national broadcaster.

Firstly to confirm why this site is rated so lowly, the Google Streetview image illustrates the worst of the aerial view. The site is not only on a slope in between roadways, heavily sun shaded and wind sheltered by trees, alongside an old water treatment filtration tank (the “Filters” ) but also in a completely unnatural location near an artificial reservoir.

The local state of neglect of both the site and the old filtration tank is evident from a slight reorientation of the image as below. This site will simply not give reliable readings from such a compromised location that was only originally installed as a rain gauge with a screen added later for local transport guidance as so many such sites were.

A curious aside regarding rain gauges comes from the Met Office themselves and one of their “Facebook” video guides. Here Ralph James explains basic “5 inch” rain gauges and how they record milimetres of rainfall whilst successfully spilling some of the “rain” at 1:22 {terrible inclusion on the part of the film makers} and in front of one of the Met Office’s most sophisticated sites at Reading University. I doubt the general public expect the observing standard and equipment maintenance to be as low as it is at Altnahinch Filters.

Below is that Altnahinch 5 inch, millimetre reading rain gauge, beautifully sharp edged but hardly disturbing the overgrowth – see any footprints? Bear in mind “reading” this device is still a manual observation technique unlike the automated temperature readings requiring the solar panel recharged battery to the right in the foreground.

In the manual days of full observations from 1/1/1965 to 25/3/2009 the relatively simple task of temperature observation at Altnahinch displayed a very patchy record. In the years immediately prior to automation, readings were not made at all for typically 10% and more of the year. However, on occasions when attendance was made, one or other or both of tmax/tmin were not taken on even more occasions. If manual temperature readings were either not or inadequately taken, it is extremely doubtful the rain gauge readings were diligently measured. With the instruction video demonstrator struggling to get it right without spilling some (despite having the ability of multiple re-shoots) one does wonder about the accuracy of occasional observers.

Given the known dubious accuracy of so many Met Office stations and the dire necessities the public are expected to swallow based on such questionable readings, I would have expected some investigative journalist in the UK’s lavishly funded public broadcaster to report the issue. But no, instead the BBC felt it more important to reveal the linguistics behind the weather station’s names. Anyone who thought “Altnahinch Filters” was an exotic packet of fags similar to Gitanes or Camel obviously needed to pay the license fee to put them straight.

The obvious fact that every single one of those highlighted weather stations is meteorological JUNK and unfit for their sole purpose seems totally “lost in translation”

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/06/08/altnahinch-filters-dcnn9147-a-weather-station-or-a-linguistics-lesson-probably-more-useful-for-the-latter/