Coton-in-the-Elms DCNN 4130 – There are worse sites……but not that many.

52.73701 -164118 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5S Installed 1/1/1991

Coton-in-the-Elms is the only automatic reporting weather station in the county of Derbyshire being just one of three sites along with Buxton and Middleton and all are Class 5. The above Google aerial image is oriented due north indicating the extreme shade this screen experiences. This image with its attendant van alongside the screen appears a poor site but gets significantly worse on further inspection.

Coton-in-the-Elms is one of a few places that claims to be the “Centre of England” and it also claims to be the furthest point from the sea of anywhere in the UK. This travelogue video by “Andy, aka the Village Idiot” is an interesting introduction to Coton and details its geographic claims and also those of its weather records. Whether or not its claims are valid, this lack of coastal influence should make this a good site for “inland” observations. Which makes it all the more disappointing that the Met Office did not secure a reliable good quality site.

Coton regularly records the regional highest temperature and very often for days on end as indeed it is at the moment. This daily high below is the third consecutive day, I would not be surprised it this trend continues and for good non-meteorological reasons.

Focusing in on the site in historic detail reveals the extent of the artificial compromises this site seasonally encounters.

The screen has been located in front of a south facing hedge (with trees around causing further wind and sun shade effects) by the corner where very extensive motorised transport delivers and collects all those rounds of hay/straw. To make matters worse that barrier, just a few metres to the north, is regularly “reinforced” with more rounds. A perfect “suntrap” garden.

In the above image (from mid morning with shadows cast westerly) the “white dot” of the screen is just visible coming out of the shade with barriers to the north and east. As the sun moves round the entrapped still air will rapidly heat up and a modern Platinum Resistance Thermometer (PRT) will pick up on any transient blip as is clearly evidenced in the graph of the day’s readings as below.

The regular “spikyness” of all day’s data indicates unnatural effects with that of 8th May a damning indictment of just how distorted the sites readings are. For that specific days comparison below is the graph for the 8th May at the nearest private weather station that reports to the Met Office Weather Observations Website. A perfectly normal curve that peaked at 12.9°C and 1.1°C lower than Coton.

Such local comparison, however, seems typically lost on the Met Office. Referring to their Location Specific, Long Term averages as is so often the case the “specific” weather station of over 34 years standing is ignored. In this case the “grid system” spreads very wide indeed with the nearest sites being 18 miles distant, not even in the same county and two (Denstone and Penkridge) of them “died” multiple decades ago. Does anyone really believe a weather station alongside a cricket pitch, by the practise nets, sight screens, heavy rollers and clubhouse in the massive urban area of Coventry 22 miles away, is likely to be comparative to this small Derbyshire village?

The Coton-in-the-Elms site is completely unfit for purpose.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/05/09/coton-in-the-elms-dcnn-4130-there-are-worse-sites-but-not-that-many/