Pitsford DCNN 4374 2nd Addendum – A demonstration of why “amateur” sites cannot be trusted for “official” purposes.

To understand the purpose of this further addendum to my previous posts on Pitsford it is important to read them first for context both here and here. In precis, a school educational weather station gained local and regional popularity despite being a non-official site variously at different locations at both ground level and on a building roof as in the headline image. Subsequently in 2018 the Met Office opted to instal a new separately located official one that was manually reporting.

For one day in 2022 this Pitsford site recorded the UK record all time highest temperature before being beaten the following day by the RAF Coningsby weather station. I personally had my doubts regarding the accuracy of this site and what credibility should be given to its readings. Ongoing events have since confirmed my view.

Following my original reports , Mike Lewis formerly of Pitsford School helpfully added a detailed comment regarding the various weather stations at the site and his role with them which I detail below.

“I read with interest the various articles concerning the met site at Pitsford. I think I’m in a better position than most to set the record straight and scotch some of the rumours concerning the authenticity of the site. Up until my retirement last April I ran the weather station for 25 years since its inception.

The weather station was established as a project to engage the sixth form in community service. The original enclosure was at ground level and laid to lawn but had to be moved to the security of the roof of the main school building owing to repeated act of vandalism. For much of its history, the site was independent of and made no claims about being linked to the Met Office. The original equipment was all secondhand and donated to the school. Very quickly, the station attracted much interest from local farmers and the wider community who funded the setting up of an automatic weather station to release real time weather data online. It was made very clear on the website what equipment was being used, where it was sited and the level of accuracy. Up until this point the only accreditation was with the climatological observers link (COL) a group of mainly amateur meteorologists.

A few years ago, the school was in fact approached by the Met office as it’s official Northampton monitoring station was facing closure as a result of the move of the university of Northampton to a new campus. The Met office were aware of the schools long-term interest in weather recording and selected the edge of the main sports field has the site of the new official monitoring site for Northampton. It was our commitment to long term recording that attracted them, not any record temperature. This has always been a manual site and the data was never contaminated with unofficial data from the schools monitoring site. Both were kept very separate. Data from the Met Office site has only ever been available from the Met Office website.

I can fully appreciate that the site’s long history of weather recording from different sites – ground then rooftop then automatic weather station and finally official Met Office site can cause some confusion to an outsider when trying to authenticate long-term weather records. However, we have always endeavoured to make it very clear on our website how the data has been recorded.

As mentioned earlier, I am now retired from the school and I’m in no position to maintain much of the weather station including its website which has now been shut down . However, the official Met Office site at Pitsford continues with a small team of observers and the data continues to be made available by the Met Office website.” 

Mike was clearly dedicated to the cause and for his 25 year tenure ensured reliable readings for the private site but as he notes the official Met Office site was indeed a separately operated function. He also points out his retirement and disengagement from the school in April 2024. The observations record for 2024 has now been released to the CEDA archives and these are extremely instructive of operational standards for the year.

The temperature readings for the first 115 days up to 24th April 2024 (presumably Mike’s tenure period) were impeccable with not a single missing reading. What happened for the remaining 251 days after his retirement is much more instructive. So many readings were missing that it was only possible to derive a daily mean temperature for 114 of those days – the 137 total missing days readings (well over half) were all subsequent to Mike’s departure. No readings whatsoever appear to this day on the Met office Weatherr Obsevations Website.

I will reiterate points I have made many times before. The Met Office depicts itself as a world leading scientific institution but the reality is far from their self portrayal. Taking observations from such a high profile record setting site should NOT be down to one “amateur” individuals motivations. This is an incredibly serious area of science on whose data massively important decisions are being taken affecting every individual and business in the UK. Observers with such a low level of diligence to the purpose of the exercise (i.e. actually taking readings on a regular and reliable basis) are potentially unlikely to be adequately accurate.

It may seem improper (even slanderous) of me to even suggest the possibility of readings taken at the unofficial rooftop automatic station to have “drifted” into the manual site’s official record log. However, who could prove such an assertion was definitely wrong? The visible 2024 records from April onwards indicate a reporting level that is exceptionally poor – this is not online disinformation it is evidentially factual as this extract below demonstrates.

Columns I and J are maximum and minimum readings respectively with NA indicating no readings taken. Note the dates column readings from 254 to 256.

It is hard to envisage their former July high record reading ever being beaten if no readings at all are being taken throughout July and August.

This post is not intended to be unpleasant to anyone, but neither is it appropriate to accept such appallingly bad standards that are ultimately the responsibility of the Met Office themselves. This is further unequivocal proof they are increasingly unfit for purpose. Rather than try to make snide remarks about online bloggers querying their poor standards perhaps they should stick to their day job and do that one properly. There will inevitably, and ultimately, be consequences for such poor performance.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/08/06/pitsford-dcnn-4374-2nd-addendum-a-demonstration-of-why-amateur-sites-cannot-be-trusted-for-official-purposes/