Ross-on-Wye Revisited. – 1976 and all that.

I first reviewed Ross-on-Wye weather station just over a year ago as a classically poor quality Class 5 site with numerous compromising issues most notably being in an enclosed suntrap “garden”. I noted the site had a long history but overlooked the fact it is one of the Met Office’s “Historic Stations” with data shown all the way back to 1930. As far as I was concerned that the was end of the matter, there was no way such a poor site should be used to represent the historic temperature record of the country. An then a neighbour who often proof reads my posts dropped an intriguing bombshell.

Paul Homewood over on the excellent “Not A Lot of People Know That” had obtained data from the Met Office comparing recorded temperatures in the exceptional summer of 1976 with those of summer 2025. The first thing that caught my eye was the list of comparatives the Met Office had offered.

Cambridge NIAB was in a completely different location in 1976, as were Writtle and Woburn. Perhaps even more alarming was that “topsy turvy” Santon Downham did not record temperatures at its present site in 1976 ( these only started from 1/11/1988). It was then, in reality, a different station known as “Santon Downham: Grimes Graves” being quite a distance away, a completely different climatology and not even in the same county.

If these suggested “comparatives” were ridiculous, the case of Class 4 Cavendish was even worse – Cavendish weather station simply did not exist in 1976 anywhere at all with its temperature data only starting from 1/3/1977 as below:

The Met Office’s powers of comparison seemingly just fit imagined numbers from the past and claim those as evidence.

I was discussing this point with my neighbour who said he would be very interested to know what the figures were for his original home town of Ross-on-Wye in 1976. I said I would look them up, he responded “Oh no you won’t”. Curious I asked why I couldn’t and his emphatic reply “because it wasn’t there!” This certainly surprised me. Delving into the historic station data file revealed this below – I have screen captured for retention lest it gets mysteriously deleted:

Every monthly figure for all measured parameters from August 1975 through to June 1985 were marked with an asterisk denoting they are “estimates” or, in more appropriate common parlance, “made up”. Going to the archive files revealed the following;

1996-05-29

Current

MISSING DATA

NO DAILY DATA : CLOSED FROM 7/1975 TO 5/1985

My neighbour then revealed his wife had worked for the local council when the station we reopened and pointed out it was well reported at the time. Checking the local press reports online revealed that Ross-on-Wye had the claim to fame of having the longest serving station observer with over 60 year service.

For all the quaint homily of the above report the simple fact is no real data whatsoever was produced from the site for over 10 years. However, this obvious data lack never seems to trouble the Met Office. Mean daily temperatures are as below.

1976…………………………………………………2025

June………………………………………..17.50°C……………………………………………17.95°C

July………………………………………….19.25°C…………………………………………..19.45°C

August……………………………………..18.00°C…………………………………………..18.5°C

So there is the “proof” courtesy of the “Official” data that in Ross-on-Wye, 2025 was “hotter” than 1976. Obviously if you disagree, on any grounds, with this “fact” you must be a “swivel eyed loony”, climate change denying, far right shill for the fossil fuel industry etc., etc.

My neighbour wanted to know where the missing 10 year period data actually came from. I reminded him of the numerical conjuring tricks the Met office employed and the likely “Well correlated” stations used.

Hereford, Credenhill is 15 miles distant at a military base and was not installed until 1/9/1999. Usk was closed 26/5/2011, Cheltenham closed 31/1/2001 leaving the only long term Shobdon alongside a former RAF runway functioning throughout. I shall not repeat the exact comments my neighbour made, suffice it to say he felt the Met office could not be taken seriously making such improbable comparisons between a suntrap park site in central Ross with windswept RAF sites……and as for Usk in Wales!

The serious point to make from all this is that it is becoming increasingly evident that the Met Office “Climate Science” department has given up on any rational form of scientific observation and representation. It is now simply promoting contrived data to fit a political agenda and this must be stopped.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/10/21/ross-on-wye-revisited-1976-and-all-that/