High Windspeeds At High Bradfield!
By Paul Homewood
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-network/#?tab=climateNetwork
I have frequently mentioned the fact that the Met Office like to use High Bradfield as an example of wind speeds, every time there is a storm.
During Storm Eleanor last week, wind gusts reached 77 mph.
But the problem with High Bradfield, which is just a few miles from us, is that the weather station sits on top of a hill in the Peak District, at an altitude of 395 m.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/january-9th-storms/
How, then, would wind speeds there compare with a genuine low level site? (The Met Office, by the way, regard anything below 500 m as “low level”).
I asked the guys at Sheffield Museum, who look after the weather station there, what the wind speeds were that day. Sheffield is one of the long running stations used by the Met Office, and sits in the middle of Weston Park, about 5 miles down valley from High Bradfield, and itself on a hill at 131 m.
According to them, the top gust was 38 kts, or 44 mph.
http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/
That is one hell of a difference, compared to 77 mph measured at High Bradfield.
The Met Office like to give the impression that winds at places like High Bradfield are typical for the country as a whole. They certainly rarely quote wind speeds at places like Sheffield instead.
But such an impression, as we have seen, is wholly misleading.
Is it too much to expect a bit of honesty from the Met Office?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Looking at the picture you are much prettier than I expected Paul!
The Met office and the BBC are all singing from the same hymn sheet. Matt Riddley’s article in the Times today about sequential interglacials and their time frames, also related to Manklovitch cycles, is a welcome breath of fresh air.
“Is it too much to expect a bit of honesty from the Met Office?”
I expect so.
Without doubt
Paint me unimpressed with these gusts. Here in Wellington, New Zealand we regularly see gusts over 100 mph recorded at Mt Kau Kau ( a storm a couple of years ago managed a gust of nearl 120 mph), yet life in the city below proceeds as normal.
“Is it too much to expect a bit of honesty from the Met Office?” Only if their incentives were changed.
“Is it too much to expect a bit of honesty from the Met Office?” Having visited their offices in Exeter and heard the propaganda, I would say a big YES.
With the advent of detailed satellite info, rain gauges, anemometers, thermometers etc. can now be sited where there is a high probability of achieving an ‘extreme’ reading to claim meaningless records.
There is also the 24hr news culture hungry for constant dumbed-down headlines. The BBC constantly headlines Heathrow for heat, remote Scottish snow fields for lows, altitude sites for winds, n/western upland slopes for rain – and goes on like the exception is what the whole county experienced. Even the hapless reporters they send out to find snow carefully angle the camera to avoid all the surrounding greenery!
Be fair Paul, the site at Weston Park is surrounded by buildings -the uny, the Children’s hospital, Weston Park hospital, the 21-storey Halamshire hospital, the Arts tower 78 m (255 feet).
Weston Park met station is a very poor data collection site, they land air ambulances within 25m of the Stevenson screen, it is within 50m of the A57, a major bus route, & in summer the ice cream vans engine exhaust blows straight at it.
Yet It is designated a climatic weather station by the UK’s Met Office !!!!
no wonder is called man made global warming.
There are supposed to be good quality stations, I assume that this is not one of these!
Someone should survey them independently of the Met office.
Forgot to add – trees on one side, museum on another & surrounded by tarmac
see pics –
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x4879789d62144213:0xeef3507b49ef48d5!2m22!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i20!16m16!1b1!2m2!1m1!1e1!2m2!1m1!1e3!2m2!1m1!1e5!2m2!1m1!1e4!2m2!1m1!1e6!3m1!7e115!4s/maps/place/sheffield%2Bweather%2Bstation%2Bweston%2Bpark/@53.3811219,-1.4914204,3a,75y,6.08h,90t/data%3D*213m4*211e1*213m2*211sRd2XKgB_f1ZHj_KiuEVGjA*212e0*214m2*213m1*211s0x4879789d62144213:0xeef3507b49ef48d5!5ssheffield+weather+station+weston+park+-+Google+Search&imagekey=!1e2!2sRd2XKgB_f1ZHj_KiuEVGjA&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_-5fnl8nYAhVIJsAKHcx5Db8Qpx8IfDAL
Zoom in on the guy with red backpack, the screen is just through the tree
Pan around to see ice cream van, plant room of Children’s hospital, traffic very often nose to tail.
Wind speeds are taken on roof of museum.
Sadly there are many sites much worse than this; the data collected is poor = GIGO.
For years we’ve been looking at the steep trend in Urban Heat Island effect, not actual temperatures.
And global geening, once again, goes unnoticed.
Jus look at their website “Effects of climate change” for a string of untruths
Of course not. The MetO together with the BOM in Australia and the US organisations are charged by the IPCC with the job of proving global warming is real, and by extension now banging the drum for extreme weather since the warming has been a bit lacking of late.