Drumnadrochit DCNN 0587 – An example of a significant undisclosed change over time.

57.32821 -4.48595 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1990

Drumnadrochit lies on the north side of Loch Ness close to the famous Urquhart Castle. The weather station is in the grounds of the private Glen Urquhart High School which annually hosts a round of the Highland Games. This lowly CIMO Class 4 climate reporting site should be of limited relevance, however, an inspection of its covert site history reveals a very common problem with the Met Office that adversely affects the credibility of its climate reporting.

Originally installed in 1990, this was a manual reporting site of dubious observational quality with numerous entries in the archives of “no data collected” as typical examples below:

Ultimately after almost 19 years the site was automated from 4/12/2009 from when, barring occasional transmission errors, the readings reporting significantly improved. There are no other notes in the archives other than “Missing Data” so that really should be the end of my review……but I did try to get a Streetview image to put the site in context and that started a lot more questions. But before then this happened.

28.9 °C is remarkably warm for a site so far north, and given I have a very low opinion of these types of sites (such as Whitechurch ) I felt I had better get a good look at this Drumnadrochit location. This is what I initially found.

The October 2021 image barely showed the station directly at the bottom of a significant slope with overgrowth seeming to encroach toward the enclosure.

Using the earlier dates feature time traveled back 10 years to 2011 and a far more open site but still revealing the unacceptable hillside bottom location.

For further confirmation I checked the only other image from September 2009 in the days prior to the site’s automation as below.

Obviously no weather station at all BUT also no records whatsoever suggesting any relocation in the archives with each and every year from 1990 installation onwards only detailing the coordinates of this “non-site”. This situation is, in fact, not at all unusual – the Met Office have regularly relocated its stations and contrary to its own stipulations not recorded the move either by renaming or renumbering the site, despite likely significant climatological changes – Cambridge NIAB is just one example of many.

Locating where the previous site was required all manner of searching not only through maps but any previous records. Flukily viewing a Highland Games youtube clip briefly scanned the games area with a potential glimpse of a screen in the distance. I could not manage a clear “still” capture but was just about able to identify the original site. Google Earth pro finally provided this image where I have marked the current and original locations.

The issue here is not just the 150 metre distance of relocation but both the major elevation change and site nature. The original site, atop the clearly visible bank in the headline image, was an open exposed site whilst the new automated site sits in front of a south facing slope sheltered from winds in most directions. This sort of move may well be claimed to be due to the requirement of automation but seems unlikely given the power is from solar recharged batteries powering instrumentation and the mobile internet connection as detailed in the i-player clip from Cardiff:Bute Park.

A cynic may argue that the relocation was motivated by a desire to artificially elevate readings by catching likely Foehn effects or just simply creating a south facing and wind sheltered cauldron for Aitken Effect to take over. It can definitely be stated that the relocation downgraded the site quality. The top of the bank below was the old location to the image right with the new site in the distance extreme left.

To summarise this relatively unimportant site demonstrates covert site changes over time which result in elevated readings. This really is not acceptable practise on the part of the Met Office who seem to have achieved their end result – regular elevated readings…..from yesterday 24th June, another regular star performer.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/06/26/drumnadrochit-dcnn-0587-an-example-of-a-significant-undisclosed-change-over-time/