On Saturday, December 22, 2012 10:23:56 AM UTC, Ian Bingham wrote:
AWS were a great step forward in weather observing but they have an Achilles

heel: they sometimes malfunction, and it’s not any Tom, Dick or Harry who

can fix them. For example just when we’re having an inordinate amount of

rainfall and we’re interested in knowing just how much, the rainfall sensors

of Aboyne and Shoeburyness have gone u/s – and those are just the two I’ve

noticed. I can’t see them getting fixed in a hurry.

Here, on the other hand, some poor devil will be standing in a waterlogged

field in his wellies, trying to make his ball-point write on soggy paper –

but it will get done, and will probably be the only rainfall record the MO

will get in this rural part of Aberdeenshire.



Ian Bingham,

Inchmarlo, Aberdeenshire.

80m asl.

Trouble is that these amateur stations' figures, no matter how accurate and how interesting to us, will never be accepted by the MO.
The result is that "official" statistics get more and more incomplete and inaccurate as the personal touch disappears. I live a couple of miles from the Filton station.It is often impossible to believe that the weather there is so different from what it is here.