Kenley Airfield WMO 03781 – Rarely a star performer in the “Extremes” stakes for a good reason.

51.30394 -09148 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 3 Installed 1/1/1988 Temperature records from 1/12/1991.

The Met Office produces a list of national daily weather extremes covering temperature rainfall and sunshine. This list is also heavily publicised on their X feed. With almost boring regularity the same culprits regularly appear as national and/or regional hotspots notably the likes of Heathrow, Charlwood (Gatwick) and Hull, East Park. I do not recall Kenley weather station ever appearing on these daily listings despite it being an airfield (partly disused) in Greater London and well within the M25. There is a reason for this.

Tim Channon reviewed the site in 2012 concluding a Class 3 rating and being spot on with the subsequent official view, Tim rarely called them wrong. https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/wmo03781-kenley-airfield/.

There are some very good historical links in his report of this important airfield that was used in both the First and Second world wars and especially the Battle of Britain. Currently the airfield has only limited use for training purposes and mostly gliders. It is, however, still maintained for operational use as a military airfield should the need ever arise.

A close up view is available as access to the site is often available and there is even a “play park” for occasional community use.

This current weather station site is obviously not the original RAF one being remote from the control tower and only has temperature records from 1/12/1997. Scouring the Met Office records does not produce any earlier dated readings – there definitely would have been a weather station here but no guarantee any records were kept for civilian purposes. This indicates the present location was chosen by the Met Office for synoptic readings hence its relatively recent origin. The obvious compromising feature is the proximity to the perimeter tarmac taxiway/access route. The notably large enclosure (typical of major Met Office sites) ensures the site comfortably meets Class 4. The 10 metre and 30 metre diameter circled areas below show only the tarmac area stopping this being a Class 2 site. A great shame that it was not moved 20 metres further away and a very good site would have been achieved.

The good thing about this site is that it is open enough to rarely experience any artificial wind sheltering (the shrubbery is very low and sparse anyway) as well as the current aviation use being minimal and unlikely to affect readings. Not a perfect site by any means but reasonably acceptable as Class 3 – now compare this to Charlwood and Heathrow which are similarly (but risibly) also rated by the Met Office as Class 3.

Heathrow………Really? Class 3 surrounded by jet blast screens and plastisol cladding to the roadside?

Charlwood (Gatwick) …….Class 3 – “You cannot be serious”

How maximum readings compare between these three aviation sites is a perfectly reasonable question as Kenley is almost equidistant from both sites and in the Greater London area. Rather than cherry pick random dates, I shall use the last 3 national record breaking dates of 10th August 2003 (Faversham 38.5 °C), 25th July 2019 (Cambridge University Botanical Gardens 38.7 °C) and 19th July 2022 (RAF Coningsby 40.3 °C)

Site………………………..10/8/2003…………………..25/7/2019……………………….19/7/2022.

Heathrow………………..37.9 °C……………………….37.9 °C………………………………40.2 °C

Charlwood………………36.5 °C………………………34.9 °C……………………………….39.9 °C

Kenley…………………….34.7  °C………………………33.7 °C………………………………37.1°C

Such consistent large discrepancies need explaining. Should rural Caterham really be recording up to 4.2°C lower than rural Harmondsworth or 2.8°C lower than rural Crawley under natural conditions? Which is most likely to be nearer the “real” temperature – an open largely grassy area or a concrete jungle inhabited by tens of thousands of cars and hundreds of jet airliners?

I feel most reasonable people would consider the Kenley Airfield site, whilst not perfect, would be vastly more likely to represent the wider area real temperature than the others detailed above.

Deploying ultra modern instrumentation in almost ancient casings within areas subject to numerous distorting factors is the absurd unreality that the Met Office is now operating simply to produce wildly inaccurate representations of local conditions. This whole farago needs to be completely dismantled and reconstructed by reputable meteorologists.

A cautionary footnote! I have an inbuilt distrust of “Artificial Intelligence” as I demonstrated in my review of Southampton particularly regarding new generations automatically trusting its answers to questions. I was curious to know for this report what the highest ever temperature recorded at Kenley Airfield was. The exact question in full was:

“What was the highest ever maximum air temperature recorded by the Met Office Kenley Airfield weather station?”

The absurd AI answer was;

I rest my case!

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/08/11/kenley-airfield-wmo-03781-rarely-a-star-performer-in-the-extremes-stakes-for-a-good-reason/