Cromer DCNN 3069 – Shoddy Maintenance Standards

52.93354 1.29085 Met Office Assessed CIMO Class 4 Installed 1/10/1884

When viewing Cromer weather station in Google aerial view, I anticipated a routine review of a Class 4 long term civic weather station. Then I saw the latest Streetview image of August 2024 above – oh dear what is, or rather isn’t, going on here.

Normally such prominent weather stations are very well tended such as notable examples of Bradford or Ross-on-Wye, however, something has clearly gone very wrong at Cromer. The level of neglect is long term, that grass did not grow overnight but there are much worse issues. Close inspection reveals detritus around the site, rusting on the screen stand and the screen casing itself is well below an acceptable standard.

Under Freedom of Information request I obtained from the Met Office the current Quality control inspection assessment of all their sites by their own unique assessment standard. Note the date of August 2024 is the same time as the street view image.

Seemingly the above poor enclosure and screen standard is considered “Satisfactory” by the Met office. This makes me very concerned regarding how bad things have to get before being rated as “Unstatisfactory” Looking back in time produces a totally different picture as this October 2008 image shows.

This is much more like the standard expected so what has caused the decline. Looking at the comment section of the CEDA archive reveals significant problems in getting reliable observers at what, at the time, was a manually reporting station. So dire was the situation that it was commented the station may have to close.

There are numerous comments relating to missing readings and related maintenance issues notably the grass being too high. Presumably, as a result the station, was automated at the end of 2009. Unfortunately, as is evident above, this did not resolve the maintenance standards and likely worsened them – the absence of daily site visits left the enclosure to fall into the current state of disrepair.

I have encountered poorly maintained sites several times but never in such a prominent location. Even more surprising is that the Met office has a major manned Class 1 site at Weybourne under 10 kilometres away from where permanent staff could oversee the situation at Cromer. It appears long term data from Cromer is unlikely to be reliable.