Blencathra DCNN7044 V. Ambleside DCNN7115 The quick and the dead – a possible record breaker.

Blencathra – 54.619656, -3.08053 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 4 Installed 1/1/1992

Ambleside, RIP – 54.42799 -2.96938 No CIMO Assessment. DECEASED 31st December 1970

Blencathra weather station is located at a picturesque Field Studies Council site 3 miles north-east of Keswick. Ambleside, lying 14 miles south of Blencathra, does NOT have a Met Office weather station. It used to have one but it was shut down the small matter of almost 52 years ago. The lack of any instruments nor readings never overly concerns the Met Office as data is still being produced for Ambleside in preference to Blencathra. The site is probably one for the record books – the longest dead weather station still reporting.

Blencathra was installed as manual reporting in 1992 and in common with most FSC sites did not enjoy a reliable observation standard. In the site’s last full year of manual reporting (2009) there were 75 days missing readings, a typical standard since installation. The rather remote nature of the site from the buildings is indicated by a still from an online drone overview of the site. The screen is the white box to the bottom right corner.

It is probably the slope that renders this site a lowly class 4 as it is certainly well away from buildings, urban heat effects or indeed any generally accepted extraneous heat sources. Indeed these remote sites often seem to be as harshly treated as their environment – the white screen can just be made out in the distance from this street view image below. The automation of the site would certainly have been a welcome respite for observers in the winter.

The contrast of this site with the long deceased Ambleside station really should be irrelevant. The Ambleside screen was located at the water treatment works on the edge of the town at an elevation that was 201 metres lower. It would have been subject to the industrial effects typical of water works and represent an entirely different climatology. Despite this (and far beyond any point of credibility) the Met Office declines to quote long term climate averages for Blencathra and in lieu offers 52 years of completely fabricated data from Ambleside.

Given that the Ambleside site closed 20 years before the above “climate period” even started and 34 years before the “peer reviewed” process to include it was published in 2004, it seems staggeringly absurd to keep up the pretence of “data”. There are no Ambleside readings at all for well over half a century and the above can only be described as official Disinformation. These fictional numbers are then extrapolated to produce regional and national figures from lots of other equally imaginary locations. The entirety amounts to a work of fiction.

The only “record” that Ambleside is likely to achieve is that of the oldest fraud in the very large deck the Met Office holds. How much longer can any responsible government organisation continue to operate with such total disregard of scientific principles.