By John Adams, current observer at St Harmon 2.
When we first arrived in St. Harmon the local farming community were very quick to inform us that we had moved to the coldest place in Wales, if not the whole of the United Kingdom. Some of them even sounded proud of the fact, but it was certainly not something we had given any consideration to ourselves before coming here. Being keenly interested in meteorology since a young child I was curious. A little investigation revealed that there used to be a Met Office climate and auxiliary observing station in the village during the 1980’s. On searching through the records on the Met Office website it soon became apparent that St. Harmon featured far more frequently in the list of coldest nights than one would normally expect. At the same time I had also observed from WOW that there was a hole in the observing network around Mid Wales, even in respect of personal weather stations. This is the story of my quest to establish whether St. Harmon really is the coldest place, and to try and fill the hole in the observation network, first with my own personal weather station and subsequently establishing St. Harmon no.2 voluntary climate station under the auspices of the Met Office.
