Northolt, Heathrow, Temperature Records and Weather Station Siting

[Aleman]

New "record" at Heathrow Airport. And look at the top 3. The same 3 I've highlighted as not meeting either the Met Office's own weather station siting parameters or the WMO's.

No.LocationStation IDAmount

1London / Heathrow Airport (United Kingdom)03772 33.1°C

2Northolt (United Kingdom)03672  32.7°C

3London, St James Park (United Kingdom)03770 32.3°C

 

[DaveL]

6 hours ago, Aleman said:

New "record" at Heathrow Airport. And look at the top 3. The same 3 I've highlighted as not meeting either the Met Office's own weather station siting parameters or the WMO's.

No.LocationStation IDAmount

1London / Heathrow Airport (United Kingdom)03772 33.1°C

2Northolt (United Kingdom)03672  32.7°C

3London, St James Park (United Kingdom)03770 32.3°C

The Heathrow max ended up at 33.3°C, which according to the Torro daily extremes page is the highest temperature in the UK since 1942, for the next 17 days (all the date records for that period occurred before 1943).

I think St. James's Park is less of a problem than Heathrow and Northolt, because Kew Gardens which IMO is well sited reported 32.3, 32.2, 32.2, 32.0 at its hourly obs from 2pm to 5pm respectively - so the maximum (not reported) may be higher than 32.3 and is close to St. James's hourly max.

At 4pm, it was Kew Gardens 32.2, St. James's 32.3, Northolt 32.5, Heathrow 33.1.

Heathrow and Northolt in that order are the worst of the Greater London sites, I'd say. Incidentally, Cambridge (NIAB) was 31.9 at 5pm, it would be interesting to see what Cambridge Botanical Garden reported, to increase or allay our suspicions ...

 

Edited August 26, 2019 by DaveL