Pitsford DCNN 4374 – Where is it, what is it and is it even still there?

52.30181 -0.89463 Met Office CIMO Class 4 Manual Site Installed 1/1/2018 OR MAYBE Somewhere else?

When reviewing the former record breaking Greycrook weather station in Scotland Tim Channon made the point “Curiously records or near records tend to be set followed by site cessation or sudden site change / equipment change.” I have also noted this happening and followed up this point in reviews at the subsequently closed Cheltenham and Gravesend stations. It appears this phenomenon is happening with this suspiciously multi sited Pitsford station.

This site is ranked a lowly Class 4 by the Met Office presumably only possibly due to shading as it is on a flat site and and the 30 metre exclusion zone for Class 2 is not adversely compromised as below. I find the Met Office view on sites like these very confusing. They must have their reasons but what they are seems a mystery.

The history of this site becomes more confusing. Pitsford School is a fee-paying independent school north of Northampton and similar in many ways to the Stowe school just 18 miles away. A weather station at Pitsford was originally established in 1998 with readings taken by students. The site had many “celebrity” patrons and high profile sponsors over the years and established its own “forecast service”. Ultimately the instruments were fully automated 2016. In 2018 another site at Pitsford school was then selected by the Met Office for inclusion as a MANUAL climate reporting station. So to clarify below is the now automated original site which is not the current manual site that is some 200 metres away as in the headline image.

Obviously this now automatic site on the roof of a school building could never be considered acceptable for accurate readings and by even the original Met Office unique standards would be described as “Unsatisfactory”

This is how the Met Office described the site on its Weather Observations Website .

“Met Office official recording station maintained by Pitsford Weather Centre at Pitsford School. The centre also runs an online automatic weather station providing live weather data. Click on the web link to access this data. Both the official and automatic weather stations upload data to WOW.”

There are thus two separate sites, one manual read by students and the other automatic on a building roof. What safeguards are there to avoid readings from the automatic station being simply used on the manual reports to avoid the trek (adverse weather?) down to the manual site? Quality control could be difficult to ensure.

Checking on the WOW site for current manual Pitsford readings reveals none at all since 20/1/2025. The above links are now dead, in fact all links to all sites (manual or automatic) lead nowhere. Both sites appear shutdown and there are certainly no readings available to view. I find it remarkably difficult to find this Pitsford area situation reliable and would avoid any data from it. This questionable situation did not, however, deter the Met Office from declaring records/near records from their remarkable new site.

In this article much was made of Pitsford recording the national highest temperature on 18th July 2022 at 38.2°C and going on to record the joint second highest national figure on 19th July at 40.2°C just one tenth of a degree behind Coningsby.

Oddly this latter achievement was not so highly proclaimed with the Met Office curious decision to tabulate “selected” stations rather than simply registering a list by descending temperature or locality radius etc. Pitsford was not deemed worthy of “selection” though the risible Class 5 St James’s Park in London was.

Was this option of only quoting “selected” sites in any way influenced by the observable fact that Pitsford’s readings were spuriously higher than those of its near and more reliable neighbours to north, south, east and west? Did the Met Office investigate this geographical oddity or in their willingness to find evidence to fit a theory simply not notice the discrepancy or not even consider it at all? Was the controversial record declared at Coningsby (with no public site access to view) to avoid scrutiny of this more “visible” site? 40°C was the determined threshold to break and Gringley-on-the-hill was far too inconsequential to promote.

……………………………………………………………18/7/2022…………………………..19/7/2022

Pitsford…………………………………………………38.2……………………………………40.2

Wittering……………………………………………….37.3……………………………………39.9

Woburn…………………………………………………37.1……………………………………39.6

Bedford…………………………………………………36.7…………………………………..39.5

Stowe……………………………………………………35.9…………………………………..38.7

Wallingford……………………………………………35.5…………………………………..38.0

In summary it appears the Met office chose to locate a station at this site probably known to record “hot” from the school station’s readings (the 1911 long term record high was recorded at nearby Raunds) in order to chase high readings. Whether or not this somewhat outdated but new manual site is still operational is unclear but what is certain is that its readings should definitely not contribute to the historic temperature record until such time, if ever, that its “provenance” is demonstrated. Surely the tax paying public deserve better for their money.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/02/05/pitsford-dcnn-4374-where-is-it-what-is-it-and-is-it-even-still-there/