Shoeburyness:Landwick WMO03693/4 – A rare daily high from a Class 1 site…..or is it?

Shoeburyness lies on the south east Essex coast a few miles north of Southend. There has been a weather station named Shoeburyness since 1865 though the original site was on the seafront some 1.55 miles from the current location at the MOD Shoeburyness weapons testing range. The Met Office rates the site as CIMO Class 1. It is a very rare occurrence for a Class 1 site to record a daily extreme of any type especially highest daily temperature as noted in Dr Eric Huxter’s excellent analysis of such sites relative to CIMO Classifications. This warranted further investigation which raised concerns regarding the Met Office assessments validity.

51.554751 0.826990 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 1 installed 1/1/1981

It is worth restating that the Met Office database has automatic default positions of site’s quality ratings of Class 1 and “Excellent” – the latter their own unique and somewhat esoteric assessment system. On receipt of the official Met Office CIMO classification list I queried the Hastings site to which uncovered their curious default position and also resulted in its downgrade to Class 4. I noticed several other dubious sites and queried another station site local enough for me to readily visit at Edenbridge which was similarly downgraded from Class 1 to Class 4.

I went on to query the only alleged Class 1 site in Scotland at Cassley at which point the Met Office declined to accept any further site queries from me simply claiming their assessment was correct despite declining to confirm what that assessment actually was. It seems the slope not meeting CIMO standards and the entirety of the local hydro electric power plant with the 100 metre exclusion zone with externally mounted air cooled transformers is not open to question.

Returning to Shoeburyness I immediately referred to Tim Channon’s 2012 review to note he definitely did not consider this to be Class 1 for quite obvious reasons as shown in my updated 100 and 30 metre radius circled areas to account for developments since Tim’s report.

My concern with Shoeburyness is, that like so many Met Office sites, it is not openly accessible to the public to further examine any details – the Met Office’s decision is, as above, demonstrably not open to question. From just aerial imagery this site does not meet Class 1 with a major car park, office buildings and roadway all within the exclusion zone. Tim felt Class 2 appropriate from what he could “see” but without nearer access this is questionable. Shoeburyness may well be an acceptable Class 2 but I, for one, from personal experience, would not trust the Met Office’s word on anything relating to accuracy of climate reporting. The increase in site activity and expansion of facilities with extra hardstanding since 2012 suggest to me Class 3 would be more appropriate.

If anyone can supply local imagery or site knowledge it would be greatly appreciated. For now I am taking the site classification with rather a large “pinch of salt”.