Met Office Confirms Lingwood Is A Class 5 Junk Site….
….but they still went ahead and declared a record temperature anyway!
On June 29th, the Met Office posted on their website an article with the title ‘New June daily temperature records heading into the record books‘
The post states:
A new UK and England June daily temperature record of 38°C has been verified by the Met Office’s site weather assessment team, higher than the 37.7°C figure previously reported.
The 38°C figure, set on 26 June 2026, comes from the same station – Lingwood – as the previously reported provisional record. As part of the usual Met Office verification process, the site weather assessment team identified the original figure was incorrectly reported as an average through a defined period, rather than the usual daily maximum at the site.
The verification process corrected this and confirmed the 38°C figure, reported with the consistent operating practices used across the country’s weather network.
Verification of the figure puts 38°C as the new highest June temperature on record in the UK, with the rigorous validation process confirming the figure.
This national meteorological service process includes a site inspection and check of the equipment. In addition, the data provided undergoes a series of quality control checks for their meteorological feasibility, including that of neighbouring station comparisons and minute-by-minute analysis.
See the post here https://www.metoffice.gov.uk
From the start, it was totally clear that Lingwood was not a suitable site for climatological purposes. It was a junk Class 5 site, as classified by the Met Office itself, with a temperature uncertainty of up to 5C.
Satellite images along with locally taken photographs showed the Stevenson screen in a totally enclosed garden, by high hedges on three sides and trees on the other – a perfect suntrap.
We now have the details of the Met Office’s verification inspection, which not only confirms everything we thought, but also shows the site is even worse than imagined.
It is clearly poorly maintained, with the surrounding vegetation much higher than the 10cm demanded by the World Meteorological Organisation for a Class 2 site. The high hedges are extremely close, not to mention trees and the horticultural patch.
WMO rules are perfectly clear – even a Class 3 must have less than 25cm of vegetation, which must also be natural. Neither the hedges nor those rows of plants meet either of those criteria.
It is extremely important that all temperature recording stations must be in open ground, as the WMO stress:
Source: eoas.ubc.ca
At best, therefore, Lingwood is a Class 4, with up to 2C of potential additional artificial warming.
According to one expert:
“the long grass should have been cut and kept cut. It will contribute as a heat source and air flow reduction on top of the sheltered site”
But it actually gets worse!
The report tells us that the Stevenson screen was dirty, inside and out, with mould on top. It is essential that these screens are painted white and kept clean, so that they reflect the heat.
The poor maintenance of this site should have immediately disqualified its data.
One other issue raised by our expert concerned a tupperware box:
He wrote:
Bad point: The wet bulb Tupperware box containing the water is covering six of the 18 holes in the base plate – this will reduce air flow in the screen.
The report also states that Lingwood verifies well with other sites around East Anglia.
Their own evidence says the opposite:
Just 12 miles north of Lingwood, the temperature at Neatishead only reached 36.6C.
The next highest to Lingwood was 37.3C at Santon Downham, another junk Class 5 site.
The original “record” at Lingwood was said to be 37.7C, but the Met Office inspection stated this had been wrongly calculated, using the average reading over 1-minute. They found that the temperature had actually spiked to 38.0C for one split-second reading:
In fact, the operator was correct – the Met Office’s standard practice is to average four readings, taken every 15 seconds, not to take the highest reading. Even that practice is a poor one, as even one spike can affect the average considerably.
The high quality US network, USCRN, uses best practice, averaging over a 5-minute period.
Platinum Resistance Thermometers can accurately record these spikes, unlike the old-style thermometers.
It is worth noting that the temperature at Lingwood shot up by nearly a full degree in the space of ten minutes. Half of that increase occurred in about two minutes.
This is a good indication of how much the switch to PRTs, which has nearly all taken place in the last couple of decades, has affected temperature trend comparisons.
It is more apparent than ever that “record” temperature declared at Lingwood should not have been allowed to stand.
The fact that the Met Office have done so shows they are more interested in propaganda than science.
They have got their “38C Record Temperature” headline, which is all that matters to them.
See more here notalotofpeopleknowthat
Bold emphasis added