Bridgefoot Addendum – an example of Cumbria’s worst to set against four of its finest.

Firstly I would like to say I am deeply indebted to reader John Parsons for taking the trouble to send me some very close up imagery of this weather station with a conveniently “inside” view of the site. This sort of detailed imagery below is critical in practically demonstrating the points I repeatedly raise and helps expose Met Office deficiencies.

In my original Bridgefoot report I was particularly scathing of the way the BBC was hyping unreliable temperature readings from Class 5 Junk sites to compare with the Mediterranean.

“ On Saturday, temperatures topped 19.1C in Bridgefoot, England.Scotland recorded a high of 18.3C in Threave, while Northern Ireland hit 17C in Castlederg.”

This type of reporting is all part of the Behavioural Insights Team “nudge” reporting extensively used in all their climate reporting as notably is being deployed now in the lead up to the latest COP fest. Any vestige of impartiality from the BBC or the Met Office on the science involved in Climate has long vanished and is now simply ideological broadcasting.

John’s imagery and site description now offer a less strident view to the one I took but are equally damning.

“The hedge to the north-east of the enclosure has died back, but in spring and summer it is quite high (maybe 3 metres). The one image shows the fence and hedge, then a grassy hollow lane, beyond that (about 4 metres away) is a chalet type dwelling in permanent occupation with big picture windows facing the enclosure. To the south-west the ground rises quite sharply, I would guess about 10 metres, so the sensor is effectively in a hollow and completely sheltered from winds from either direction.”

So as the original headline Google aerial image shows, John has confirmed very close encroaching vegetation 3 metres (10 feet) high inevitably casing wind shelter. Indeed his site description indicates the screen is heavily wind shaded from almost all directions. This is critical in that the Met Office knows full well that in low wind speeds their chosen naturally aspirated Victorian technology will over record temperatures. From Met Office “Fact Sheet 17”

This rather euphemistically tries to downplay a problem more recently further evaluated by a Reading University meteorological department paper. which was described in a “puff piece” by “The Conversation” as “relatively minor” despite over 1 in 8 readings affected in this way.

The image below shows recent cutting back of overgrowth presumably to allow sunlight to actually hit the solar PV collectors that supply the site power – an indication of just how bad the sun shading effect must have been.

Perhaps one of the most illuminating factors are some recent (2025) notes in the archives.

Remarks

Start date	End date	Remark type	Remark
2025-04-29	Current	SITE INFORMATION	2 CONCRETE SLABS REMOVED TO PREVENT SPLASHBACK INTO THE TBR.
2025-04-29	Current	INSTRUMENTATION	TBR MOVED APPROX 1.3M TO THE NE FROM ORIGINAL POSITION TO IMPROVE EXPOSURE.

A “TBR” is a “Tipping Bucket Raingauge” (as above”) which was both relocated and had “concrete” slabs removed. This note to “improve exposure” is very illuminating. Whilst the Met Office seemed preoccupied with “splashback” into the rain gauge did they not stop to consider what the effect of all that vegetation may have had on both rain and temperature effects? Well possibly not as they certainly did not move those slabs very far as John’s imagery shows.

This just stacking of problematic things to one side does not really seem the way such a lavishly funded organisation like the Met Office should operate. As as for signage………

Clearly Bridgefoot leaves a lot to be desired in quality terms which the Met Office is obliged to acknowledge in its “Class 5 (additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5 °C)” rating. The timely aspect of John supplying this imagery and site assessment is that I am in the process of producing a report about the remarkably unusual position Cumbria finds itself relative to the Met Office.

On mainland UK there are just 16 CIMO Class 1 weather stations……..4 of them are in Cumbria alone.

St Bees Head, Shap, Warcop Range and Walney Island are all top quality sites to be reviewed over my next few reports. Before I had Johns photos I had actually started a St Bees Head report with the headline “A practical study of CIMO Classifications versus Anthropogenic Global Warming.”

As will be revealed in detail, even the Met Office’s own heavily homogenised (“doctored”) figures for Cumbria’s Class 1 sites indicate a level of temperature change, for their chosen comparative 60 year period from 1961 to 2020, that is massively different (lower) to that claimed in certain other areas where low grade Junk sites predominate.

Cumbria is indeed both well endowed with quality sites but also much complete dross. Whilst there are the 4 Class 1 sites, none of the remaining 11 (a very high density even for such a large county) are class 2 or 3 with 5 Class 4 and 6 Class 5. Surely the Met Office should be pursuing quality rather than dubious quantities (such as Bridgefoot,) in its climate reporting network…….but then again that would not produce the desired end results.

As for Bridgefoot, well at least the door opens on the north face as it is supposed to …….or does it?

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/11/06/bridgefoot-addendum-an-example-of-cumbrias-worst-to-set-against-four-of-its-finest/