please empty your brain below
What’s the history behind the Met Office being at Heathrow, Northolt and Kenley but not London City or Biggin Hill?

Sprout Eater | 20.07.16 - 7:56 a.m. | #

And did you get any water bottle yesterday?

Leuconoe | 20.07.16 - 8:13 a.m. | #

@Sprout eater

London City was not Air Ministry property - nor I think was Biggin Hill.

A fascinating history - Can anyone shed any light on where the LWC's Exhibition Road site was?

I remember the LWC at Penderel House very well. However, it was not because its roof was over-exposed* that the weather readings were taken from State House - on the contrary: the fifteen-storey State House (where I happened to work in the 1980s) was more suitable because it was much more exposed. I don't know if the move to Clerkenwell Road was related to the demolition of State House in 1992.

(My cousin, who works for the Met Office, got her name in the Evening Standard when they were reporting on a particularly stormy day and the reporter visiting Penderel House noticed her bedraggled arrival back from the roof after taking the hourly readings.

dg writes: *Fixed, thanks.

timbo | 20.07.16 - 8:17 a.m. | #

The first three were at one point government owned, City has always been private and Biggin Hill was sold off before this weather station policy?

Toby | 20.07.16 - 8:17 a.m. | #

Biggin Hill has a long Met Office history which began on 17th February 1920 (there's a very full account here).

By 1934 it was the only UK weather station maintaining hourly around-the-clock observations, but its importance declined after WW2 and the last Met Office observation was on 31 January 1958.

Now that the airfield is in private hands regular hourly weather readings are still taken (and have been since 1984), but Biggin Hill is no longer part of the Met Office's real time network.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 20.07.16 - 8:33 a.m. | #

Reminds me of a sketch on TV from a long time ago, not sure what it was;
" Here is the weather forecast, I have just been up on the roof of the Air Ministry and it is p***ing down"

Mike | 20.07.16 - 8:49 a.m. | #

I walked a section of the London Loop on Monday and went right past the Kenley weather station. I didn't know what it was then but I do now! Thanks DG.

THC | 20.07.16 - 9:07 a.m. | #

With all the hysteria about global warming, doesn't it vaguely bother anyone that the highest temperatures today tend to get reported at airports? They didn't have airports, or massive expanses of tarmac and concrete for that matter, 100 years ago!

Max Roberts | 20.07.16 - 9:35 a.m. | #

Kudos to DG for spending an extra hour on the tube on the hottest day of the year to get a photo of Heathrow weather station. Above and beyond the call of duty, I feel!

martin | 20.07.16 - 10:01 a.m. | #

"The LGfL (London Grid for Learning) weather station network is the densest online network of weather stations in the world. "

https://weather.lgfl.org.uk/

Just thought you'd like to know.

Running Correspondent | 20.07.16 - 10:10 a.m. | #

Climate change deniers are well-known for seizing at straws. But the intense scrutiny which temperature records get, and the enormous number of other sites (in addition to airports), and the range of other data additional to temperature records, combine to indicate that, yes, it is happening.

Malcolm | 20.07.16 - 10:20 a.m. | #

The building on Exhibition Road which was the home of the Met Office from 1910 to 1919 appears to be the one (still there) on the south side of Imperial College Road, and now part of the Science Museum. It seems it was purpose-built, with a Post Office on the ground floor.

| 20.07.16 - 10:44 a.m. | #

"enormous jet engines pumping out heat, but rest assured this is of minimal influence compared to the blazing rays of the sun"

This seems obvious. If not, people could just congregate outside Heathrow in the winter and not feel cold.

Yes, climate change is happening, and it is 90% likely to be due to human activities, but the question (which, like "how would the economy have done if REMAIN won", can never be properly answered) is mitigate, adapt or some combination of both?

John | 20.07.16 - 10:50 a.m. | #

The Exhibition Road Post Office still had a bellpush by the front door labelled `Meteorological Office' when I was a student in the area in the 1960s.

jack hopkins | 20.07.16 - 11:10 a.m. | #

Just found the Post Office/Met Office building on GSV. The picture in the article must date from before construction of the main Science Museum building began next door in 1913 - the photo does show, to the left of the building, the rather shabby entrance to the subway to South Kensington station. The gothick tower looming behind must be the Natural History Museum. The Post Office moved out in 2014.

@Jack Hopkins
I must have passed that building hundreds of times but never noticed that bell-push - even though, as a meteorology student, it should have caught my attention!

timbo | 20.07.16 - 12:05 p.m. | #

Is it just me...or should there really be a 'weather station' in London that represents somewhere crowded and built-up where there is almost 24/7 people and traffic? Traflagar Square or somewhere suchlike? Yes the readings would be affected by traffic/buildings/pavement etc...but more realistic reading that people will be 'subjected' to at a 'street-level'.

E | 20.07.16 - 2:37 p.m. | #

The trouble is that there are two conflicting interests:
(i) the weather analyst who needs to have a consistent standard of observations across the network, so that (s)he can identify and track (e.g.) changes of airmass and thus make a useful forecast, and
(ii) the people who inhabit the real world and experience the true conditions where they live and work.

When weather observing networks were first set up, huge urban areas (with effectively their own climate) had not yet developed, so approach (i) dominated thinking. Research is under way to try to model conditions within cities, to try to quantify such effects as width, height and orientation of buildings, and the amount of green space at street level. Urban observations will be needed to verify such models.

jack hopkins | 20.07.16 - 7:58 p.m. | #

@ E

Weather Underground shows zillions of private weather stations in London, including Trafalgar Square (with a webcam).

Map centred on Bus Stop M, of course...

Gerry | 20.07.16 - 11:09 p.m. | #

Re Brogdale. It's a great place to visit. If you go on a guided tour you get a sampling of fruit - apples, pears, cherries etc. & nearby Faversham has the Shepherd Neame brewery too.

Marmaduke Jinks | 20.07.16 - 11:25 p.m. | #

Thanks Gerry. Been a while since a comment made me laugh on here.

E | 20.07.16 - 11:40 p.m. | #

@timbo and others
The Post Office's lease on the Exhibition Road building expired in 2014. The post office counter service had been removed several years before. The delivery/sorting office at the back has now gone also. The library on the second floor is hired out by the Science Museum for events sometimes and is a charming old library with dark wood shelving right up to the high ceiling and a little walkway around to get to the higher shelves.

The Science Museum tried to sell the building for residential redevelopment but it has in fact been bought by Imperial College London and will soon become home to the Dyson School of Design Engineering.

James Dyson is an alumni of the Innovation Design Engineering degree run jointly by Imperial (to the north and west of the building) and the Royal College of Art (the other side of Exhibition Road).

Tunnel Bore | 21.07.16 - 10:41 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy