WYE DCNN 5375 – Why was such a good site closed?

51.18158 0.94480 No Known Met Office CIMO Assessment Installed 1/1/1917 Closed 1/4/2006

Wye weather station was installed in the grounds of Wye College, an agricultural education institution which can trace its origins back to the 15th century. Located in the Stour Valley of the North Downs in Kent it lay approximately 4 miles north-east of Ashford and just 7 miles to the south, south-east of the Class 4 Faversham weather station. Although now closed this site should prove notably useful in the compilation of a national historic temperature record. Wye is an interestingly important site along with many other good quality but closed sites.

The Met Office has a web page on weather site classifications which reads like a list of excuses for failure. The Met Office starts by describing its own unique system (which is an irrelevance for international comparisons) that is only “approved” by themselves and with no independent oversight. It is “good” solely because they say so. They then go on to claim it is difficult to meet CIMO Classes 1 and 2 in the UK – this is complete nonsense.

I am not going to detail the flaws in their argument, rather I suggest readers study their link above in conjunction with the CIMO requirements here and come to their own conclusions. For my part I do not feel it is unduly demanding to find sites with a 30 metre radius exclusion zone for Class 2 and they used to have several of them – like WYE.

The above 30 metre radius circled area was completely free of any extraneous heat sources and ground cover changed little over the years. Unlike other parts of the country, the Google Earth Pro aerial images covering Kent go as far back as 1940 – all images throughout that period show a pristine site. It is worth noting that it was fully equipped with a 10 metre wind mast to the north of the screen. The site is perfectly flat, there are no neighbouring tall trees hence no shadowing issues. The site was on the outskirts of the modest sized Wye village and over 4 miles from the outskirts of Ashford – Urban Heat Island effects would be of no concern at all.

Although the site closed down in 2006 this street view image below from 2015 shows the screen centre image and windmast to the north. On my recent site visit I noted both were still there to this day though in a sorry state of repair.

Observations at Wye were always taken manually by trained staff at the college with the standard being impeccable. Of note is that despite almost a century of readings noted by the Met Office, they have only digitally archived readings from 1959. Their file of photocopied manual records actually goes back to 1924 such as below – note the readings to the tenth of a degree Fahrenheit.

It is, however, believed locally that the college’s own recording system has reputable data going as far back as 1892 when the agricultural courses were originally founded and these are currently being searched for.

What all the above shows is an (at worst) Class 2 fully accurate and representative site that probably met Class 1 when originally installed and was never relocated. The observers were highly skilled in visually reading to such a small unit and the reading record was almost infallible……so why close it down and leave the screen and windmast still there?

Following various ownership changes the college itself did indeed close down but that was not until 2009 and three years after the weather station’s demise. Surely such a good site could simply have been automated or volunteer readers found. Even the Met Office’s data log showed it almost becoming a centenarian so surely worth continuing.

Or perhaps Class 2 Wye was a problem with the high quality and, most importantly, genuine accuracy of its readings compared to its dubious near neighbour? On 10th august 2003 Faversham (Class 4 but really should be 5) weather station gained notoriety in meteorological circles by setting the (then) UK all time national highest temperature of 38.5°C. This was so absurdly out of kilter with other stations that even the RMETs investigated and concluded the reading must be wrong. Wye recorded 3.8°C lower than Faversham and emphatically falsified the latter’s reading but the Met Office must have its records come what may.

Was Wye the “wrong” reading in its almost perfect location? Well given that other nearby official sites at Eynsford and Herne Bay equally recorded much lower it seems a certainty Faversham was wrong by a long way. And here is the rub, Wye was shut down in April 2006 , Herne Bay was shut down in February 2006 and Eynsford was shut down in 2008……..YET the ever reliable to produce wildly improbable and elevated readings Faversham site remains to this day! No reputable meteorologists trust the site and several organisations have openly expunged Faversham “records”.

The important aspect, though, is that there are reliably accurate readings for the full years from 1925 to 2005 available ( an eighty year period) during which this is a known quality site with very accurate and complete readings. I am hoping to personally try to transcribe the manual Fahrenheit shown period to get a full climate reporting 30 year period in addition to those subsequent to 1961 onwards.

Of course the Met Office does not even really recognise Wye and would rather refer people to either low grade or long gone sites for climate averages.

It is very instructive to note the locations of the chosen “comparative sites”. Faversham is located on a tidal creek, Folkestone (closed 2003) is home to a harbour and the Channel tunnel terminal, Dover (closed 2002) is world famous for its White Cliffs and massive harbour, Dungeness (closed 1986) is a shingle promontory with 4 seawater cooled nuclear reactors and Manston (CIMO Class 2) is a very large airfield on the Isle of Thanet. Every one one of these are coastal located sites – Wye is inland with the nearest coastal point 10 miles away. This aspect of UK “Climate Reporting” sites and associated “gridded cells” being heavily skewed towards primarily forecasting points will be the subject of a future report.

In conclusion Wye is an important site – and Met Office “Reasons for Failure” are no more than invalid boring excuses.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/08/05/wye-dcnn-5375-why-was-such-a-good-site-closed/