Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Tenby Weather Station Blog

Tenby Weather Station is one of the oldest in Wales and possibly the longest running. It has been in several locations, but its present location has been the same since 1969. The ‘station’ is comprised of two separate sites, the Stevenson Screen at the golf course and the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder located at the top of the tower on Castle Hill, which overlooks the harbour, Castle Beach and with views to Caldey Island.




There is a fairly long list of volunteers that have been prepared to venture out in all (most) weathers to take readings and feed them back to the Met Office. The more recent (last 25 or so years) volunteers took over from a gentleman by the name of Mr Harold Hewitt. Dickie and Trisha Putwain became involved in mid-1995 when Dickie took most of the readings and Trisha assisted and telephoned the readings in on a daily basis. Dickie attended the Climatological Observers’ course in October 1996, with Trisha attending the course in November 1999. A Certificate celebrating 105 years of the Tenby Weather Station was received by Dickie and Trisha in April 1997. The station is now in it’s 131st year! 

Unfortunately, Dickie passed away in May 2003, at which time Trisha then took over the responsibility for the station. Their daughter Rosie, who had helped with taking readings, continued to help her mum. There were several local people who also assisted to cover holidays and occasions when Trisha and Rosie were not able to do the readings. Trisha continued, to great extent on her own for seven years, by which time it was getting quite a task. My wife worked in the same school as Trisha, and Trisha happened to mention that it was getting a bit much and wished she had some regular help. My wife very kindly volunteered my services, without me knowing at that point, which led to me becoming a volunteer in January 2010.  

Trisha and I, and with the assistance of Rosie when her and her mum ‘house swapped’ in the summer, kept up with observations for a few years, but Trisha was struggling with walking and so a call for more volunteers went out. We were fortunate to have some local interest with a small number of local people volunteering for various lengths of time. We were very fortunate to receive interest from Diana & David Bradley who joined the team. Work circumstances often becomes a barrier for volunteers who unfortunately then are not able to help out for long. Some volunteer for a few years and then find the commitment can become problematic or restrictive. For 3 or 4 years we had a reliable group of volunteers but then lost a couple due to changes of circumstances. A couple of years later and my work circumstances changed meaning I would not be available as often and potentially create gaps in readings, therefore, another call for volunteers went out. Luckily, we were joined by Richard Harries and Harry Gardener. We were very fortunate that Di and David, who are both retired teachers, are still assisting and have been of great assistance for quite a few years now. 

Richard, who was born on the family farm in Pembrokeshire, has for most of his life had a ‘close relationship’ with the weather. Farming is obviously very dependant on the weather, but Richard went into the Merchant Navy after undertaking a Marine Engineering Apprenticeship qualifying as an Officer. This took him on travels all around the world experiencing 120-foot waves, crashing through frozen seas, and ‘melting’ in the tropics and the Middle East. As if the weather wasn’t enough to deal with, there was the added fun of trying to avoid hitting the rocks going through the Madagascar channel and having to deal with limpet mines being attached to the large crude carrier tankers that he worked on!

When Richard left the Merchant Navy, he got married, and his work became varied including such things as Security, Lecturer in Electronic, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Software Documenter, and an Engineer in a local cheese factory where he learnt that stormy weather could curdle the huge trays of processed cheese!

Harry saw an appeal requesting for extra helpers with weather recording, so decided that as he was retired and living in and loving Tenby, volunteered for helping with collecting and changing the sunshine cards.  Harry was aware of the glass ‘orb’ and the way it is designed such that the sun marks or burns the card providing record of the sunshine hours on the card each day. As Harry puts it, ‘I knew it was in a superbly romantic location, so I selflessly volunteered to regularly climb to the most superb 360 viewpoint in Tenby two early evenings about 5pm each week’.

The Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder is mounted on the top wall of the north side of a medieval tower (a remnant of Tenby Castle) that is the highest point on Castle Hill. Once you have climbed up to it you find complete uninterrupted 360-degree views over the sea and back over the town.



About twenty yards away north you can look down on the head and figure of a statue of a cloaked Prince Albert on an impressive pillar surrounded by seats for the glorious views, with a grand set of wide steps up to him.  This is the Welsh Albert Memorial raised by public subscription. He faces the other way onto the town and into Wales.

Castle Tower is accessed via a heavy, triple locked, studded, wooden door, and once inside, you ascend a spiral staircase. At first floor level there is access to the side tower and continuing up to the next level brings you to the battlement atop the side tower. Then you turn and climb up onto the somewhat open and exposed top battlement of the higher tower, which faces out to sea on three sides, and the glass sphere gleaming within the Campbell-Stokes frame sits on top of the north wall.

The Stevenson Screen has been located at the Tenby Golf Course since 1969. It was relocated in the spring of 2023, but only a short distance from its original location, due to some redevelopments of the Golf Course facilities being undertaken. The photographs below were taken on particularly cold mornings (10/01/2021 & 23/01/2021), and unusually icy, for the location.

 





My interest in the weather started way before becoming a volunteer weather observer, dating back to my childhood growing up in Norfolk. We lived on the second highest hill in Norfolk, which really isn’t very high, and experienced some fascinating weather events that intrigued me. I was also a keen CB Radio enthusiast with a fantastic communication range due to the elevated location, also experiencing weather impacts on radio communications. Sometimes restricting communication to only a few miles and other times (in certain conditions) able to communicate thousands of miles!

My career in environmental work has many associations with the weather, particularly air pollution which has been a major part of my work. I have been involved with monitoring environmental impacts, developing policy and regulations, also regulating industry, and advocating behavioural change to improve the environment within which we live. 

I am fortunate that my employers, Environmental Compliance Limited, understand the links between what the business does and how it relates to the weather, so are happy for me to take a little bit of time out of the working day to undertake weather observations. As a business, we make use of weather data for a range of purposes to assist clients meet their environmental obligations and also to promote sustainable business practice to help improvement of the environment for everyone. This data is purchased from the MET Office as being the most reliable data to use. This is down to the large number of volunteers that undertake daily observations across the country at specific times of day and in methodical and consistent ways.

There is something very rewarding about volunteering for something that, whilst individually seems a very small gesture, contributes towards providing data that can be used in so many ways to help build resilience and help deliver the mechanisms for future forecasting that will hopefully help save lives in the future as the weather patterns change over the coming decades.

Oliver Matthews

Tenby Weather Station Coordinator

On behalf of, and with grateful thanks to, the Tenby Weather Team.

(Dedicated to Trisha Putwain – an absolute inspiration and friend)